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PATRIOTIC 

ADDRESSES 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND, FROM 1850 TO 1885, ON SLAVERY, 

THE CIVIL WAR, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF 

CIVIL LIBERTY IN THE UNITED STATES 



BY y 

HENRY WARD BEECHER 



EDITED, WITH A REVIEW OF MR. BEECHER'S PERSONALITY 

AND INFLUENCE IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 
/ 



JOHN R. HOWARD 






^ 



NEW YORK 
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT 

1 88 7 






Copyright, 18S7, by 
Fords, Howard, & Hulbert 



Springfield (Afass.) Printing Co. , Eleflrotypers and Printers 



PREFACE. 



The "Addresses" gathered in this volume come from 
various sources. 

Some are reprinted from the files of The Independent, 
in whose columns they originally appeared. The ser- 
mons delivered just before the war and during its first 
two years are taken from a volume of Mr. Beecher's 
discourses, entitled " Freedom and War," issued under 
the careful editorship of Mr. Frederic Beecher Perkins 
in 1863. The speeches in England are from the re- 
ports published by the Union and Emancipation Society, 
Manchester, England, in 1864. Of that edition — the 
only authorized one ever before published — the editor 
of the present work, at Mr. Beecher's request and with 
his cooperation, in 1872 began a revision, for the mak- 
ing of some such volume as is here gathered; but other 
matters intervened and the project lay in abeyance, 
until the sad event of Mr. Beecher's death suggested 
a more complete collection of his political contributions 
than that earlier day could have furnished. The dis- 
courses since the war are reprinted from the reports in 
"Plymouth Pulpit," and some of the addresses have 
been gathered from contemporary newspaper reports. 
The one before the Society of the Army of the Potomac 
is from the published minutes of that body. 



6 PREFACE. 

In all cases effort has been made to secure the best 
reports of his spoken addresses. Those delivered in 
America were nearly all taken down by Mr. T. J. Ellin- 
wood, who from about the year 1858 was Mr. Beecher's 
authorized stenographer, not only in all church meetings 
but on public occasions when there was especial desire 
for a full record; and to his fidelity and trained accu- 
racy we owe very much of the great legacy to be found 
in Mr. Beecher's words. 

The article by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes descriptive 
of the English episode — "The Minister Plenipotentiary" 
— is reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1864, 
by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

The " Review of Mr. Beecher's Personality and Political 
Influence" which prefaces the ''Addresses" was originally 
intended to cover only his political career; but it grew, 
almost by necessity, to a somewhat larger form by rea- 
son of the desire to show the pure, unselfish springs of 
his action and the steady consistency of his course. 

It is proper to say that this volume has been prepared 
under the authorization of Mr. Beecher's family repre- 
sentatives. The undersigned alone, however, is respon- 
sible for the opinions expressed in the "Review." 

JOHN R. HOWARD. 

New York, October, 1887. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



REVIEW OF MR. BEECHER'S PERSONALITY 
AND POLITICAL INFLUENCE. 

By JOHN R. HOWARD. 

■r^ -r, PAGE 

1. Essential Principles u 

2. Heredity, Training, and Education, .... le 

3. Ten Years of Missionary Work 44 

4. Plymouth Church: Personal Traits, .... 55 

5. Political Career, 78 

6. Strength and Weakness, ' 134 



7. Conclusion, icc 



PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

By henry ward BEECHER. 
I.— FREEDOM AND SLAVERY. 

1. Shall We Compromise? 167 

Article in TJie Independent, Feb. 21, 1850. 

2. American Slavery, . 178 

\ / Address before the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, New 

^^ York, May 6, 1851. ^ J' J. 

3. On Which Side is Peace? 196 

Article in Tlte Independent, June 26, 1856. 

4. The Nation's Duty to Slavery, .... 203 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Oct. 30, 1859. 

5. Against a Compromise of Principle, . . . 224 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 29, i860. 

6. Our Blameworthiness 246 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Fast Day, Jan. 4, i86i. 



8 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

II.— CIVIL WAR. 

PAGB 

7. The Battle Set in Array 269 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, April 14, 1861. 

8. The National Flag 289 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, May, 1861. 

9. The Camp: Its Dangers and Duties, . . 304 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, May, 1861. 

10. Modes and Duties of Emancipation, . . 322 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, 1S61. 

11. The Success of American Democracy, . . 342 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, April 13, 1862. 

12. National Injustice and Penalty, . . . 359 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Sept. 28, 1862. 

13. The Ground and Forms of Government, . 382 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Nov. 22, 1S62. 

14. Liberty Under Laws 403 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Dec. 28, 1S62. 

15. The Minister Plenipotentiary, .... 422 

By O. W. Holmes; descriptive of Mr. Beecher's speeches in En- 
gland; reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly of January, 1864. 

16. Speech in Manchester, England, . . . 437 

Oct. 9, 1863. 

17. Speech in Glasgow, 465 

Oct. 13, 1863. 

18. Speech in Edinburgh 495 

Oct. 14, 1863. 

19. Speech in Liverpool 515 

Philharmonic Hall, Oct. i6, 1863. 

20. Speech in London, 545 

Exeter Hall, Oct. 20, 1863. 

21. Farewell Breakfast^ London, .... 574 

Radley's Hotel, Oct. 23, 1863. 

22. Farewell Breakfast, Manchester, ... 594 

Oct. 24, 1863. 

23. Farewell Breakfast, Liverpool, . . . 625 

St. James's Hall, Oct. 30, 1863. 

24. Mr. Beecher's Own Account of the English 

Speeches 640 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



25. Home- Reception in Brooklyn 654 

Academy of Music, Nov. 19, 1863. 

26. Address at Fort Sumter Flag-Raising, . . 676 

Charleston (S.C.) Harbor, April 14, 1865. 

III.— CIVIL LIBERTY. 

27. Abraham Lincoln, 701 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, April 23, 1865. 

28. Conditions of a Restored Union, . . . 713 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Oct. 29, 1865. 

29. Reconstruction of the Southern States, . 736 

The "Cleveland Letters," written in August and September, i866. 

30. National Unity 750 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Nov. i8, i86g. 

:^\. Centennial Review, 772 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 30, 1876. 

32. Past Perils and the Peril of To-day, . . 789 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 29, 1877. 

33. Address: Society OF THE Army OF THE Potomac, 809 

Ninth Annual Retmion, Springfield, Mass., June 5, 1878. 

34. Retrospect and Prospect, 825 

Sermon in Plymouth Church, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 27, 1884. 

35. Eulogy on Grant 840 

Address delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, Oct. 22, 1885. 



List of Illustrations. 



1. Henry Ward BeECHER, Frontispiece 

At the age of forty-three (iSsO- 

" ' ^ DDJ FACING PAGE 

2. Lyman Beecher, i8 

At the age of sixty. 

3. William Lloyd Garrison, 50 

Abolitionist; editor of T/ie Liberator; eminent Anti-Slavery agitator. 

4. John C. Calhoun, 82 

U. S. Senator from South Carolina; chief apostle of Secession. 

5. Horace Greeley go 

Founder and editor of The New York Trihme. 

6. Henry Ward Beecher, 134 

At the age of sixty-five (187S). 

7. Henry Ward Beecher, 155 

At the age of seventy-three (i8S6). 

8. Henry Clay, 167 

U. S. Senator from Kentucky; orator, statesman, compromiser. 

9. John Charles Fremont, 196 

Eminent explorer; first Republican presidential candidate; Major-Gen- 
eral U. S. Army. 

10. Charles Sumner, 200 

U. S. Senator from Massachusetts; Anti-Slavery statesman and orator. 

11. John Brown, 203 

Abolitionist; Kansas emigrant; hanged for invasion of Virginia. 

12. Abraham Lincoln, 269 

From a daguerreotype taken in Washington, 1865. 

13. Daniel Webster 302 

U.S. Senator from Massachusetts; orator; expounder of the Constitution. 

14. Salmon P. Chase, 322 

U. S. Senator from Ohio ; Anti-Slavery statesman ; Lincoln's Secretary 
of the Treasury. 

15. William Henry Seward, 352 

U. S. Senator from New York; Anti-Slavery statesman ; Lincoln's Sec- 
retary of State. 

16. Frederick Douglass 407 

Escaped negro slave; orator; U. S. Marshal Distri(5t of Columbia. 

17. Wendell Phillips, 548 

Lawyer of Boston, Mass.; eminent Anti-Slavery orator. 

18. Posters from the Walls of English Cities, 1863, . 652 

19. Ulysses S. Grant, 676 

From a photograph taken in 1865. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES. 

John Ruskin, in the preface to his book entitled, "The 
Two Paths," on the importance of organic form in archi- 
tectural decorative design, has this strong passage: — 

"We are all of us willing enough to accept dead truths, or blunt 
ones ; which can be fitted harmoniously into spare niches, or 
shrouded and coffined at once out of the way, we holding com- 
placently the cemetery keys and supposing we have learned 
something. But a sapling truth, with earth at its root and 
blossom on its branches ; or a trenchant truth, that can cut its 
way through bars and sods ; most men, it seems to me, dislike 
the sight or entertainment of, if by any means such guest or 
vision may be avoided. And indeed this is no wonder ; for one 
such truth, thoroughly accepted, connects itself strangely with 
others, and there is no saying what it may lead to." 

The central element of Henry Ward Beecher's character 
was his sensitiveness to truth. From his youth he 
eagerly desired it, earnestly sought it, welcomed it with 
delight, and then poured out his whole soul in using it 
for the good of man, — which he always believed to be the 
cause of God. To a remarkable extent, for one who 
worked in the midst of men and along the lines of social 
forces, he laid his course in obedience to principle, hold- 
ing a sturdy loyalty to it amid all the swaying passions 
and policies by which he was surrounded. In one sense 
this was no credit to him, since it was his natural temper- 
ament. As he said in reference to facing the stormy 
English meetings: "I have expressed my views in any 
audience, and it never cost me a struggle. I never could 
help doing it." However, now that he is gone, our 



12 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

inquiry does not so much take the attitude of praise or 
blame: we are concerned only to know what the man 
was; what were the relative points of strength and of 
weakness in his make-up; and how these combined with 
the movements and events around him, to bring about 
the unquestionable resultant of a personal influence, 
wider and more potent than that of any other American of 
his time. If that seems a strong statement, it must be 
considered that his influence — whatever it was — at no time 
owed anything to the accidents of inherited station, or the 
great leverage of public office, by which individuals may 
wield the powers of a people, but was the immediate effect 
of his own personality. 

The special intent of this volume is to present a general 
view of Mr. Beecher's career with reference to the great 
political revolution which took place in the United States 
while he was in public life. But to separate his political 
activity from the rest of his life — domestic, social, and 
religious — is impossible, if one would get at the real sources 
of his conduct, the genuine secrets of his power. The 
natural endowments of the man; the influences under 
which he grew; the successive fields of his labor, with 
their opportunities and limitations; the unfolding of his 
character and capabilities; his modes of working, accumu- 
lation of knowledges, general and special preparations, 
tenses and moods of utterance; the gradual enlargement 
of his influence; the social and ecclesiastical and political 
entanglements which at times hampered his course; the 
steady outflow of energy, of thought, of stimulating im- 
pulse, in harmony with the humanitarian movement of the 
age, which distinguished him to the very end of his long 
life, — these considerations are all inseparable and essential 
in understanding any phase of his career. 

His public utterances were all the outgrowth of the one 
grand theme of his thought and faith: The fatherhood of 
God and the worth of man as God's child, — not only the 
core but the very sum and substance of his teaching, 
from beginning to end. Whatever the special topic, that 
underlying principle was sure to be found at the bottom. 



ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES. 13 

However variant the visible pattern — and surely few minds 
since Shakespeare's have laid hold on such a wondrous 
number and diversity of matters for treatment — the warp 
and backing was that maxim of his life. Whether upon 
his own platform in Plymouth pulpit, or lecturing on art 
or literature or economics, making an after-dinner speech, 
or writing a novel or a trifling paper or a letter of travel, 
thundering through times of war and commotion, or dis- 
cussing policies and parties in the piping times of peace, 
— his work was all surrounded and permeated with an 
atmosphere of the brooding love of God and the duty of 
man to man. 

An amusing instance of this characteristic is related.* At 
the lecture he delivered in Dublin, on " The Wastes and 
Burdens of Society," where the local magnates, although 
desirous of hearing the celebrated American orator, were 
in great trepidation lest he should say something about 
religion to the distaste of Irish Catholics, or about British 
politics, to the disturbance of civil order and governmental 
discipline in that turbulent town, the chairman introduced 
him as follows: — 

" Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor to introduce to 
you a distinguished orator from Yankeeland. Mr. Beecher is 
not on this platform in his clerical character, so we are not to be 
treated to any exposition of his theological sentiments. Mr. 
Beecher is not here as a politician, and therefore we will not hear 
from him any exposition of his political principles. [Hear, hear, 
attd applause ?\ But Mr. Beecher is here to deliver an address of 
more than ordinary social importance. As a well-known philan- 
thropist, from his long experience, from the wonderful abilities 
the Great Master has gifted him with, and from his well known 
character as one of the most distinguished orators, we may an- 
ticipate, I think, an address — a lecture — that shall not only be 
instructive but delightful. I have great pleasure in introducing 
Mr. Beecher to your notice this evening." 

Mr. Beecher, on coming forward, said: — 

" I have been very kindly introduced by the distinguished and 



«"A Summer in England (1886) with Henry Ward Beecher." Edited 
by James B. Pond. New York: Fords, Howard, & Hulbert. 



14 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

honorable gentleman who has accompanied me, and therefore I 
accept the position assigned. I have not come to speak on the- 
ology ; and you shall never know how much you have missed. 
{Laughter?^ I have not come to speak on politics. I have enough 
of that in my own country [laiig/iter], and even if I knew about 
your politics, I should think it very inexpedient, as one born 
abroad, to meddle with local affairs and local questions. I know 
that it is not necessary for one to know much about politics in 
order to make a good speaker; but, nevertheless, I accept the 
delimitation, and there is nothing left of me but this — that I 
am a man. That's enough. 'A man's a man for a' that.' And as 
to the other things, I give them a go-by, in the hope that some 
twenty or thirty years hence I may revisit you, and that you then 
will be very glad to hear my opinions about those other sub- 
jects." 

Mr. Beecher gave the lecture in one of his own peculiar 
moods, caused by the attempt to confine him v^rithin certain 
bounds. Mr. Pond in telling the story says: "The audi- 
ence soon had reason to believe that he had in some way, 
perhaps unconsciously, woven a great deal of religion and 
politics into the lecture; at least the chairman told me 
after the lecture that he could see and feel it all through.'' 

And so it was, at all times. His religion was not a mat- 
ter for Sunday performance; it was that which filled his 
life and thought, for which and by which — as at once an 
aim and an inspiration — he did that which he found to do. 

In a brief sketch, such as this must be, it is evident that 
the elements of the character, training, and general career 
of so large and effective a man must be but lightly touched 
upon rather than thoroughly studied; yet the present 
writer holds a consideration of them necessary to a proper 
comprehension of Mr. Beecher's course in connection with 
civil affairs. That it will be adequate or complete is not 
to be expected; such is a labor for broader powers and 
later years: but that it should be of interest, and of use in 
understanding the essential qualities of Henry Ward 
Beecher's great mind and greater heart, is the design and 
hope of the writer. 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 15 



II. 

HEREDITY, TRAINING. AND EDUCATION. 

The familiar thought that great men, however loftily 
they may tower above their contemporaries, are yet the 
product of their own times, has been recently applied 
to Mr. Beecher by the London Globe, a conservative Tory 
paper, having little sympathy with anything that he repre- 
sented. It says: — 

" He may be taken as a conspicuous illustration of the view that 
there is such a thing as greatness of personality, as distinguished 
from greatness in any particular capacity. ***** Henry 
Ward Beecher was the leading type of his own people in his own 
day ; and as such he will doubtless be remembered." 

Indeed, it is as one peculiarly representing the highest 
ideal of American theories and practical citizenship that 
the man must be considered. 

Henry Ward Beecher was a type of the best American- 
ism, by his ancestry and birthright. A widow, Mrs. Han- 
nah Beecher, his earliest ancestor in this country, and her 
son John, came here from Kent, England, in 1638 with 
Master John Davenport's company at the time of the settle- 
ment of New Haven, Connecticut; and Andrew Ward, 
another of the same company, was his ancestor on his 
mother's side. He himself mentions, in one of his speeches 
in England during the war, the fact that his great-great- 
grandmother, Mary Roberts, was a full-blooded Welsh 
woman; and he felt that he owed no inconsiderable part of 
himself to the Welsh blood in his veins. 

John Beecher, the immigrant, and his descendants, Jo- 
seph, Nathaniel, and David the father of Lyman, were 



l6 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

mighty men in stature and strength, Nathaniel and David 
being blacksmiths. Henry Ward was the eighth child of 
Lyman Beecher and Roxanna Foote, the latter of whom 
was a descendant of Andrew Ward, already mentioned. 
They were married in 1799; and Lyman Beecher, who 
brought the combative and somewhat disputatious tem- 
perament of his father, the blacksmith, into the profession 
of the ministry, settled first at East Hampton, Long Island, 
and twelve years later moved to Litchfield, Connecticut. 
Here, on the 24th of June, 1813, Henry Ward was born. 

Thus we find him, at the outset, an offshoot of the sturdy 
English stock, infused with the highly sensitive and poetic 
Welsh temperament, planted on a stony, breezy, sunshiny 
hill of New England. His early years were to be spent 
amid that characteristically Puritan people, and subject to 
all the bracing atmospheric conditions of that time and 
region. 

The training of children in these days, in respect to both 
their social, mental, and moral development, is so rich and 
full of interest on every side, that it is almost impossible 
to conceive what it was in Henry Ward Beecher's child- 
hood. It is pitiful to look back at such a picture as Mr. 
Beecher has drawn of his own early school-days. From 
our point of view, it is hard to believe that children were 
so neglected; and, on the other hand, looking forward from 
that, it is hard to see how such a starved childhood could 
have grown to such a glorious manhood: — 

" It was our misfortune, in boyhood, to go to a district school. 
A little, square, pine building, blazing in the sun, stood upon the 
highway, without a tree for shade or shadow near it; without 
bush, yard, fence, or circumstance to take off its bare, cold, hard, 
hateful look. Before the door, in winter, was the pile of wood 
for fuel ; and there, in summer, were all the chips of the winter's 
wood. 

" In winter we were squeezed into the recess of the furthest cor- 
ner, among little boys, who seemed to be sent to school merely to fill 
up the chinks between the bigger boys. Certainly we were never 
sent for any such absurd purpose as an education. There were 
the great scholars; the school in winter was for them, not for us 
pickaninnies. We read and spelled twice a day, — unless something 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 17 

happened to prevent, which did happen about every other day. 
For the rest of the time we were busy in I<eeping still. And a 
time we had of it, indeed ! Our shoes always would be scraping on 
the floor, or knocking the shins of urchins who were also being 
'educated.' All of our little legs together (poor, tired, nervous, 
restless legs, with nothing to do!) would fill up the corner with 
such a noise, that every ten or fifteen minutes the master would 
bring down his hickory ferule on the desk with a clap that sent 
shivers through our hearts to think how it would have felt if it 
had fallen somewhere else ; and then, with a look that swept us 
all into utter extremity of stillness, he would cry, 'Silence, in that 
corner!' Stillness would last for a few minutes; but little boys' 
memories are not capacious. Moreover, some of the boys had 
great gifts of mischief, and some of mirthfulness, and some had 
both together. The consequence was that, just when we were 
the most afraid to laugh, we saw the most comical things to laugh 
at. Temptations which we could have vanquished with a smile 
out in the free air, were irresistible in our little corner where a 
laugh and a stinging slap were very apt to woo each other. So, 
we would hold on, and fill up ; and others would hold on and fill 
up too; till, by and by the weakest would let go a mere whiffet 
of a laugh, and, then, down went all the precautions, and one went 
off, and another, another, touching off the others like a pack of 
fire-crackers! It was in vain to deny it. But, as the process of 
snapping our heads and pulling our ears went on with primitive 
sobriety, we each in turn, with tearful eyes and blubbering lips, 
declared 'we didn't mean to,' and that was true; and that we 
'wouldn't do so any more,' and that was a fib, however uninten- 
tional; for we never failed to do just so again, and that about 
once an hour all day long. 

" A woman kept the summer school, sharp, precise, unsympa- 
thetic, keen, and untiring. Of all ingenious ways of fretting little 
boys, doubtless her ways were the most expert. Not a tree was 
there to shelter the house. The sun beat down on the shingles 
and clapboards till the pine knots shed pitchy tears, and the air 
was redolent of warm pine-wood smell. The benches were slabs 
with legs in them. The desks were slabs at an angle, cut, hacked, 
scratched, each year's edition of jack-knife literature overlaying 
its predecessor, until in our day it already wore cuttings and carv- 
ings two or three inches deep. But if we cut a morsel, or stuck 
in pins, or pinched off splinters, the little sharp-eyed mistress was 
on hand, and one look from her eye was worse than a sliver in 
our foot, and one nip of her fingers was equal to a jab of a pin ; 
— for we had tried both. 



lo HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

" We envied the flies — merry fellows, bouncing about, tasting 
of that apple-skin, patting away at this crumb of bread; now out 
of the window, then in again ; on your nose, on your neighbor's 
cheek, off to the very schoolma'am's lips, dodging her slap, and 
then letting off a little real round and round buzz, up, down, this 
way, that way, and every way. O, we envied the flies more than 
anything, except the birds! The windows were so high that we 
could not see the grassy meadows; but we could see the tops of 
distant trees, and the far, deep, bounteous blue sky. There flew 
the robins; there went the blue-birds, and there went we. We 
followed that old Polyglott, the skunk-blackbird, and heard him 
describe the way they talked at the winding up of the Tower of 
Babel. We thanked every meadow-lark that sung on, rejoicing 
as it flew. Now and then a 'chipping-bird ' would flutter on the 
very window-sill, turn its little head sidewise and peer on the 
medley of boys and girls. Long before we knew that it was in 
Scripture, we sighed — O, that we had the wings of a bird — we 
would flyaway and be out of this hateful school. As for learning, 
the sum of all that we ever got at a district school would scarcely 
cover the first ten letters of the alphabet. One good, kind, 
story-telling, Bible-rehearsing aunt at home, with apples and 
ginger-bread premiums, is worth all the schoolma'ams that ever 
stood to see poor little fellows roast in those boy-traps called dis- 
trict schools." 

Perhaps it would be hard to find anywhere a more apt 
and complete summing up of the characteristics with which 
this boy started life: physically strong, full of life, with 
keenly sensitive nerves, quick to see and to feel the influ- 
ences of nature, especially in its aspects of poetry and free- 
dom from constraint, with a heart swiftly responsive to 
sympathetic treatment, combustible with merriment and 
with tears, and a soul that instinctively reached out toward 
the beautiful and the good. That which does not appear 
at this time, and which must have been very slow in mak- 
ing its appearance, was the remarkable mental capacity of 
which the man was a notable example throughout his en- 
tire life, but which the boy seems to have shown no hint of. 

What he received from his father and mother by direct 
inheritance certainly cannot be overlooked; and it is worth 
more than a passing glance to consider what was the do- 
mestic atmosphere in which he grew through boyhood and 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 19 

youth to early manhood, — if only to show the shallowness 
of the small critics of our day, who because this great 
original thinker grew out luxuriantly in all directions be- 
yond the limits of the trellises on which their own slender 
vines were trained, are fain to say, " He is a great talker; 
but he knows nothing of theology; " the fact being that in 
Henry Ward Beecher's youth, in old Connecticut, theology 
was the food he ate, and the milk he drank, and the air 
he breathed, and the ground he trod, from his very earliest 
years. Theology was the only thing that he got a surfeit of, 
and doubtless it was out of his own familiarity with it, and 
his final perception of its barrenness for good in practical 
labor upon the souls of men, that he so impatiently went 
beyond it. 

Dr. Lyman Beecher was a born belligerent. He was a 
man of thorough theological training himself, under Dr. 
Dwight of New Haven, and in the controversies and feuds 
of the Congregational and Presbyterian and Unitarian 
churches of his day he took no uncertain part. He was a 
revivalist, an ardent laborer in the Temperance cause, and 
in every direction one of the foremost clergymen of his time. 
A sermon preached in 1810 on the killing of Alexander 
Hamilton by Aaron Burr attracted special attention; and his 
famous Six Sermons on Intemperance (1814) were power- 
ful factors in the reform then moving throughout New 
England. His family was large; his income of three hun- 
dred dollars, after five years increased to four hundred, 
gave even in those times a narrow margin. He was eccen- 
tric and peculiar, and absent-minded; in everything except 
the personal influencing of men to right living, the discussion 
of theoretical questions in theology and practical problems 
in morals, an eminently unpractical man. He carefully 
thought out his sermons, but usually preached them without 
notes, pouring them forth with great vehemence, and also 
with great effect upon his hearers. Keenly alive to the influ- 
ences of music, and thoroughly unconventional, so far as 
outward appearances were concerned, he was accustomed 
to relieve the tension of his mind and nerves after preach- 
ing by violin-playing or, as like as not, by going to the 



20 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

wood-pile and sawing wood. He was a man of tremen- 
dous impulses, and lightning-like changes of mood; a rec- 
ognized thinker, a powerful orator, a genius of many sides. 
Though by no means a symmetrical character, he was an 
eminent force for good in his day. 

In spite of Dr. Beecher's musical sensibility, he was 
curiously lacking in any perception of beauty in art, and 
his son Henry Ward's love for all such matters in later 
years was one of the things that he could not understand. 

If the sources of impulsive power, the broad sense of 
morality, the mental alertness, the ardent earnestness for 
man, the lofty aspiration for Heavenly things, the rich 
humor, the quick wit, the careless freedom from conven- 
tionality, the subtle nerve-sensitiveness to music, and the 
magnificent physical frame, elasticity of muscle, and per- 
fection of organic health, came from the father, the mother 
of Henry Ward Beecher contributed some elements with- 
out which he would not have been the man he was. 

The great men have usually risen from families unknown 
before their advent; yet, whenever a man's career has made 
it worth while to seek out his progenitors, it is usually 
found that he had a mother of remarkable qualities. 

Roxanna Foote was a woman of rare nature. Miss 
Catharine Beecher, the eldest of Dr. Beecher's thirteen 
children, in her " Educational Reminiscences " speaks of 
certain traits in the characters of both the mother and 
father which are worth notice. The mother, she says, had 
"a high ideal of excellence in whatever she attempted, a 
habit of regarding all knowledge with reference to its 
practical usefulness, and remarkable perseverance." She 
gives illustrations of Mrs. Beecher's esthetic taste and 
positive artistic talent, in making and painting a car- 
pet from a useless bale of cotton that Dr. Beecher had 
bought for its cheapness, and in painting and decorating a 
set of old wooden chairs, in her beautiful needlework, her 
remarkable paintings of fruits, flowers, and birds, and her 
miniatures on ivory, all accomplished when the young 
mother of four or five children, a housekeeper, and a 
teacher of a boarding school. 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 21 

The father passionately loved children, but the mother, 
though benevolent and tender, was not demonstrative. 
The father was imaginative, impulsive, and averse to study; 
while the mother calmly enjoyed both studying and teach- 
ing. The father, although profuse and poetical, was a 
trained dialectician; and yet the mother, untrained, he re- 
garded as fully his equal in argument. She had a refined 
and shrinking nature, but in emergencies showed a native 
strength and power of command. 

Mrs. Beecher's spiritual traits impressed themselves upon 
her children, but she gave them also their characteristic 
physiognomy; for the " Beecher look," so familiar to the 
public in the faces of Dr. Edward, Miss Catharine, Henry 
Ward, Mrs. Stowe, and others of the elder group, is not at 
all Beecher, but distinctively Foote, and may be seen — espe- 
cially the fine nose, the full eye, the mobile, sensitive 
mouth, and the general contour of the mask — in many 
members of the old Connecticut family of that name. It 
was the Beecher power infusing the Foote refinement that 
found its consummate products in Harriet and Henry. 

Mr. Beecher once told the present writer that his father 
was very irascible. "One day," said he, "being much an- 
noyed by some hogs that kept getting into his garden, he 
seized his gun and rushed to the door. My mother anx- 
iously followed, and cried, 'Oh Father, don't shoot the 
poor things ! ' He flashed back at her, ' Woman, go into 
the house ! ' and when he was telling me of it years after- 
ward he said : ' Without a word or look she turned, 
quietly, majestically, and went in — but she didn't get in 
before I did. I threw my arms around her in an agony of 
self-reproach, and cried, " Forgive me — Oh forgive me ! " 
She uttered no word, but she looked at me like a queen — 
and smiled — and kissed my face: my passion was gone 
and my offense forgiven.' Up to the last of his life he 
never spoke of her but with intensest admiration and lov- 
ing remembrance. She must have been a noble woman." 

This lovely mother died when little Henry was but 
three years old. His remembrances of her were vague, 
but full of tender and beautiful imaginings. He seems to 



2 2 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

have cherished his slight memories and what he could learn 
of her, as a beautiful ideal which, throughout his life, ap- 
pears in many exquisite passages of writing or of speech. 

In one of his sermons occurs the following: " I can 
never say enough for women for my mother's sake, for my 
sisters' sake, for the sake of others that gathered in the 
days of my infancy about me, in return for what they 
have interpreted to me of the beauty of holiness, of the 
fullness of love, and of the heavenliness of those elements 
from which we are to interpret Heaven itself." 

So much, then, for what Mr. Beecher inherited from his 
parents. Upon the death of his mother there came into 
his family another person of whom the man was never 
tired of saying beautiful things, as, for instance, this allu- 
sion to her in his "Fruits, Flowers, and Farming," — "My 
dear Aunt Esther, who brought me up, — a woman so good 
and modest that she will spend ages in Heaven wonder- 
ing how it happened that she ever got there, while the 
angels will alwa3^s be wondering why she was not there 
from all eternity." 

This excellent and beloved woman, a sister of Dr. 
Beecher, came to take charge of the family after Mrs. 
Beecher's death. A close economist, an accomplished cook, 
systematical and neat in all family arrangements, but 
gentle, loving, and a very soul of brooding motherly kind- 
ness, her well-ordered household moved along with Dr. 
Beecher's impulsive nature in perfect harmony. At the 
end of the year a second mother was brought to the 
home, of whom Miss Catharine says that she 

" Introduced a more complete and refined style of housekeep- 
ina^, which she had acquired or observed in the families of her 
two uncles, Gov. King, of Maine, and Rufus King, a former am- 
bassador of the United States to England. Under her quiet and 
lady-like rule, I again was trained to habits of system, order, and 
neatness, entirely foreign to my natural inherited traits, as it re- 
spects personal habits, while in the most unfavorable circum- 
stances, she was a model of propriety and good taste. . . . She 
had a most sweet and gentle speech, which, even in the most try- 
ing circumstances, never became loud or harsh." 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 23 

Mrs. Beecher, in writing to her former home about this 
family into which she had come, says: — 

" It seems the highest happiness of the children (the elder ones 
especially) to have a reading circle, and they have all, I think, 
fine capacities for learning. Edward probably will be a great 
scholar. Catharine is a fine looking girl, and in her mind I find 
all that I expected. Mary will make a fine woman ; will be 
rather handsome than otherwise. The four youngest are very 
pretty. George comes next to Mary. Harriet and Henry come 
next, and they are always hand in hand. They are as lovely 
children as I ever saw, — amiable, affectionate, and very bright." 

Now, to add to the foregoing pictures of the family, take 
this sentence from Miss Catharine again. Speaking of her 
first experience in school teaching she says: "The only 
pleasant recollection is that of my own careful and exact 
traini^ig under my most accurate and faithful brother Ed- 
ward, and my reproduction of it to my sister Harriet and 
two others of my brightest pupils." 

Thus, though it would appear that the early school- 
ing of little Henry was less than nothing, the qualities 
that he inherited from his parents, and the advantages 
of mutual training, of intelligent conversation, of varied 
reading in the midst of a family circle of unusual aptitude 
and varied acquirements, gave him advantages of no mean 
quality; while it is not at all unlikely that the early neglect 
of his little mind gave him a chance to solidify and develop 
that splendid physique which after all was the source of 
much of his power. 

The society in Litchfield at the time of his youth was of a 
rather high intellectual grade, there being in the town a well 
known law school and several other institutions of learning; 
it was an era of what Emerson calls " plain living and high 
thinking." This was in one respect unfavorable to the 
development of the boy, inasmuch as it tended to separate 
the father's intellectual sympathies from his children, 
leaving them largely to shift for themselves. It was, how- 
ever, but according to the temper of the time; and the con- 
ditions of their Litchfield home resulted in an atmosphere 
highly favorable to the growth of character, the honorable 



24 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

examples of life about him exerting an influence upon his 
whole future life. He has several times expressed his 
gratitude to God that his early life was passed without 
knowledge of impurity or vice of any kind. He was sin- 
gularly favored by his surroundings in that regard; and 
his knowledge of such things, utilized in later years with 
great dramatic power, in his " Lectures to Young Men," 
not only, but in all his course of preaching, resulted from 
a careful gathering of information in conversation with 
those who knew. For instance, his apparent familiarity 
with the modes and influences of gambling, in his Indian- 
apolis lectures to young men, came from a series of talks 
which he had with a gambler in that city, with whom he 
sought an acquaintance for the express purpose of learn- 
ing something about the facts, the bearings of which he 
was going to discuss. So that, although he had never 
been inside of a gambling house, and did not even know 
one card from another, his own intuitions of human nature, 
his quick sympathy with others and power to put himself 
by imagination in their places, enabled him to clothe the 
bare bones of fact with such living power that the pictures 
were recognized as truthful and vivid to the last degree. 

He says in one place: " I thank God for two things — 
first that I was born and bred in the country, of parents 
that gave me a sound constitution and a noble example. 

I never can pay back what I owe to my parents 

And I am thankful that I was brought up in circumstances 
where I never became acquainted with wickedness." 
And again: " I never was sullied in act, nor in thought, 
nor in feeling, when I was young. I grew up as pure as a 
woman. And I cannot express to God the thanks which I 
owe my mother, and to my father, and to the great house- 
hold of sisters and brothers among whom I lived. And 
the secondary knowledge of those wicked things which I 
have gained in later years in a professional way, I gained 
under such guards that it was not harmful to me." 

Combative as Dr. Beecher was, there must have been in 
him much of the power of sweetness and self-control which 
the son so markedly exhibited during his own season of 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 25 

greatest tribulation. In a sermon on "The Moral Teach- 
ing of Suffering," Mr. Beecher says: — 

"I recollect distinctly, on one occasion, when I was not more 
than six years old, that a man of great violence of temper came to 
see my father, and rated him with such a scolding as I had never 
heard. I looked at my father with amazement, as he sat perfectly 
still and tranquil. When the man had done, and felt relieved, 
father began, in the gentlest manner, to say to him, 'Well, if all 
you say is true, I think you are right in the severity of your re- 
marks ; but I suppose that if in any regard you are not correct, 
you are willing to be set right.' ' Yes,' said the man with a growl, 
'of course I am.' 'Well, will you allow me to make one state- 
ment?' said father, humbling himself before the man. 'Yes.' So 
father began with a little matter, and stated it; and then he went 
a little further; and then a little further; until, by and by, the 
man began to lose color, and at last broke out, ' I have been all 
wrong in this matter; I do not understand it.' After he had gone 
away, father said to me, in a sort of casual manner, 'Give up, and 
beat 'em.' I got an idea of self-restraint under provocation, which 
I never could have got by all the instruction in the world which 
came to me merely in the form of ideas, and in picture-forms 
and fables; I had before me the sight of my father suffering — for 
his pride was naturally touched (though you might not think it 
from his posterity, yet there was pride in my father to some ex- 
tent); he felt it keenly; and under the keenness of the feeling he 
still maintained perfect calmness and perfect sweetness. He 
overcame the man by suffering. He suffered reproach and abuse, 
and maintained himself under them." 

It will not do in this connection to omit mention of 
Charles Smith, an old negro who used to saw wood for 
Dr. Beecher, and do odd "chores" about the place, and 
to whom Mr. Beecher has frequently alluded in terms of 
profound affection and gratitude. Little Henry occupied 
the same room with him, and records the undying im- 
pression made upon him by the man's genuine piety, 
lovely character, and profound enjoyment of his religion. 
Mr. Beecher says: "Every night he would set the candle 
at the head of his bed and pray, and sing, and laugh, and 
I bear record that his praying made a profound impression 
upon my mind. I never thought whether .it was right or 
wrong, I only thought, ' How that man does enjoy it ! 



26 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

What enjoyment there must be in such prayer as his.' I 
gained more from that man of the idea of the desirableness 
of prayer, than I ever did from my father or mother. My 
father was never an ascetic, he had no sympathy with any- 
thing of a monkisli tendency; and yet this poor man, 
more than he, led me to see that there should be real 
overflowing gladness and thanksgiving in prayer." 

He was a shy and diffident boy; his natural articulation 
was thick and indistinct; his memory was poor, and to all 
influences except those of nature without and the affec- 
tionate appeals of domestic love within the home circle, he 
seems to have been rather dull than bright. When he 
was ten years old he was put in the young ladies' school, 
kept by his sister Catharine, in Hartford, where among 
forty girls he was the only boy. One who knew his early 
days writes: — 

" Here his mirthfulncss began to develop very rapidly. He kept 
the little company of thirty or forty girls in continuous roars of 
laughter. His store of fun was exhaustless. The school was di- 
vided into two divisions in grammar, with leaders on either side, 
and at certain periods public examinations were held, when the 
successful competitors were suitably rewarded. On such occa- 
sions Henry was not wanted by either division, as he would in- 
variably throw the whole division into convulsive merriment. 
One day his sister took him aside to a private apartment to 
drill him in the rules and definitions, which he found almost 
impossible to commit to memory. 'Now, Henry,' said the 
teacher, 'A is the indefinite article, you see, and must be used 
only with a singular noun. You can say a man, but you can't a 
me)i, can you ? ' ' Yes, I can sa.y A?)ie?i too,' said the mischievous 
little rogue. ' Father always says it at the end of his prayers.' 
' Come, Henr3s don't be always joking; now decline he. Nomi- 
native /te, possessive his, objective hzm. You see his is possess- 
ive. Now, you can say his book, but you can't say him book.' 
' Yes, I do say hymn-book too,' said the incipient scholar, with a 
cunning, quizzical little smile. At this point the teacher, failing 
to contain herself any longer, burst into laughter, which pleased 
him immensely. ' But now, Henry, seriously, do attend to the 
active and passive voice. Now, / strike is active, you see, be- 
cause if you strike you do something. But / am sir tick is 
passive, because if you are struck you don't do anything, do you?' 
'Yes I do; I strike back again.'" 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 27 

After a year of Hartford he was sent to the little town 
of Bethlehem, not far from Litchfield, to attend a school 
kept by the Rev. Mr. Langdon, where he gained but little 
except the further development of his love of outdoor 
study and familiarity with the life of nature. 

At twelve, he was plunged into an entirely new envi- 
ronment, by the removal of his father to Boston, to take 
the pastorate of the Park Street Congregational Church. 
Here he was confined among streets and house-walls, not 
only, but also still further imprisoned by being placed in 
the Boston Latin School, which, although it did give him 
the rudiments of Latin grammar, gave him but little else, 
except a sense of restraint and an irrepressible desire of 
outbreaking rebellion. 

Boston days, however, did really give him an uplift. 

" A green, healthy, country lad, with a round, full, red-cheeked 
face, at about thirteen years of age we entered this city of mar- 
vels. How fast our heart beat, on Sunday morning, to hear so 
many bells clamoring all together and filling the heavens with 
calls to worship. One solitary bell had we been used to hear; 
one sweet bell, that rolled out its tones for a mile around and 
more, rising and falling as the wind blew or lulled, and having 
the whole air to itself, to make its own music in. This jangle 
and sweet dissonance of Boston bells was among the first things 
that touched the secret spring of fancy, and sent us up into 
dreams and imaginings. . . . Next to Boston bells were Bos- 
ton ships. We shall not again see anything that will so profoundly 
affect our imagination. We stood and gazed upon the ship, and 
smelt the sea-air, and looked far out along the water to the hori- 
zon, and all that we had ever read of buccaneers, of naval battles, 
of fleets of merchantmen, of explorations into strange seas, among 
rare and curious things, rose up in a cloud of mixed and chang- 
ing fancies, until we scarcely knew whether we were in the body 
or out." 

He mentions also the Charlestown Navy Yard, with long 
rows of unmounted cannon; the mounted sea-batteries; 
clambering all over the men-of-war building in the ship- 
house, and the dismantled ships that lay against the pier 
head. The result of all this was not only the unconscious 
filling of his imagination with material for future use, but 



28 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

the arousing in him of an intense desire and firm determi- 
nation to go to sea. 

Here the father showed his tact in management by his 
skillful dealing with the boy. He granted cheerfully the 
lad's wish to go to sea, but said, " Of course you do not 
want to be a common sailor ? " " No, sir, I want to be a mid- 
shipman, and after that a commodore." " Yes, yes," an- 
swered the father, " well, to do that you must study mathe- 
matics and navigation, and all that." 

And thus the young fellow went with cordial zest to 
Amherst, Mass., where at the Mount Pleasant academy, 
under the tuition of Mr. Fitzgerald, a West Point graduate 
whose manly ways captivated him, he worked hard and 
really made excellent progress in mathematics; and this, 
not mechanically, but as the West Point fashion is, thor- 
oughly, and with understanding. "You must not only 
know, but you must know that you know," was Mr. Fitz- 
gerald's dictum; and the boy's knowledge was frequently 
tested controversially by his instructor, to whom, as 
Mr. Beecher has said in later years, he felt that he owed 
his habit of becoming well-grounded in facts for the 
formation of his opinions, and his power to freely and 
good-naturedly sustain his positions in the face of storm 
and argument. 

At this same school, also, he received a training of in- 
calculable benefit at the hands of Professor John E. Lovell, 
the elocutionist. In his "Yale Lectures on Preaching" 
Mr. Beecher says: — 

" No knowledge is real knowledge unless you can use it with- 
out knowing it. You do not understand the truth of anything, 
until it has so far sunk into you that you have almost forgotten 

where you got it If you desire to have your voice at 

its best and to make the best use of it, you must go into a drill 
which will become so familiar that it ceases to be a matter of 

thought, and the voice takes care of itself It was my 

good fortune in early academical life to fall into the hands of your 
estimable fellow-citizen. Professor Lovell, now of New Haven, and 
for a period of three years I was drilled incessantly (you might not 
suspect it, but I was) in posturing, gesture, and voice-culture. . . 
. . It was the skill of that gentleman, that he never left a man- 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 29 

ner with anybody. He simply gave his pupils the knowledge of 
what they had in themselves." 

In continuing the same subject with reference to his later 
studies at the theological seminary, Mr. Beecher says: — 

" There was a large grove lying between the Seminary and my 
father's house, and it was the habit of my brother Charles and 
myself and one or two others to make the night, and even the 
day, hideous with our voices as we passed backward and forward 
through the wood, exploding all the vowels from the bottom to 
the very top of our voices. The drill that I underwent first and 
last produced, not an oratorical manner, but a physical instru- 
ment, that accommodated itself readily to every kind of thought 
and every shape of feeling, and obej^ed the inward will in the 
outward realization of the results of rules and regulations." 

Now, for the first time in his life, were the young man's 
true powers and sensibilities laid hold on by the whole- 
some stimulus of ambition, the real aspiration of accom- 
plishing a purpose. True, his naval fancy soon faded 
out in the substantial enjoyment of developing his newly- 
awakened powers; moreover, his rescue from the dis- 
tracting excitements of the city (for simple as they were, 
they were wild dissipation to him) and his return to the 
more wholesome influences of country life had a most 
favorable effect upon him, physically and spiritually; for 
at the end of the first year, in the midst of a general revi- 
val of interest in religion, his whole heart turned God-ward, 
and he united with his father's church in Boston, and de- 
lighted his father's heart by announcing his determination 
to take up the ministry, as a profession. He spent two 
years more at Mount Pleasant preparing for college, and 
entered Amherst at the end of that time. 

It is interesting to see how apparently slight occurrences 
at that time entered deep into his soul, and produced ef- 
fects that were visible during the very plenitude of his 
power in later days; for instance, in his sermon entitled 
" The Background of Mystery,'' preached some forty-four 
years after the event, he gives the following incident: — 

" Once, when a boy, I stood on Mount Pleasant, at Amherst, 
and saw a summer thunder-storm enter the valley of the Con- 



30 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

necticut from the North. Before it was all bright; centerwise it 
was black as midnight, and I could see the fiery streaks of light- 
ning striking down through it; but behind the cloud — for I could 
see the rear — it was bright again. In front of me was that mighty 
storm hurtling through the sky; and before it I saw the sunlight, 
and behind it I saw the sunlight; but to those that were under 
the center of it there was no brightness before or behind it. 
They saw the thunder-gust, and felt the pelting rain, and they 
were enveloped in darkness and heard the rush of mighty winds; 
while I, that stood afar off, could see that God was watering the 
earth and washing the leaves, and preparing the birds for a new 
outcome «|f jubilee, and giving to men refreshment and health. 
So I conceive that our human life here, with its sorrows and 
tears, as compared with the eternity that we are going into, is no 
more than the breath of a summer thunder-storm ; and if God 
sees that our experience in this world is to work out an exceed- 
ing great reward in the world to come, there is no mystery in it 
— to Him."* 

The fact that he was the son of the foremost preacher of 
New England and indeed of the whole country, dis- 
tinguished young Beecher for notice among his classmates 
at college; but he did not rest on his father's reputation, 
for, as is learned from the reports of his classmates, he 
made himself felt immediately and continuously among 
them in all matters of earnest moral and religious influence, 
of physical and athletic sports, and of general literary and 
rhetorical effort. 

Dr. Holmes, in his eloquent paper concerning Mr. 
Beecher's English war speeches, entitled the " Minister 
Plenipotentiary," calls him " the same lusty, warm-hearted, 
strong-fibered, brave-hearted, bright-souled, clear-eyed 
creature, as he was when the college boys at Amherst ac- 
knowledged him as the chiefest among their foot-ball 
kickers." He was interested in matters of reform, having 
decided anti-slavery views and being a total abstainer from 
ardent spirits; made himself a power in the class prayer- 
meetings; and always attra.cted the attention of his fellows 
by the ability and originality of his essay-writing and his 
fluency and eloquence in debate and extempore speaking. 

* Printed in Mr. Beecher's volume entitled, " Evolution and Religion." 



HEREDITY, TRAINIXG, AXD EDUCATION. 31 

His fount of humor flowed constantly, and irrepressibly. 
It was a frequent sight to see a throng about him and to 
hear from it roars of laughter. Already he was showing a 
peculiar combination of native powers that furnished the 
tools for his future work. 

His interest in phrenology began at this time. He says: 
" I suppose I inherited from my father a tendency or in- 
tuition to read man. The very aptitude that I recognize 
in myself would indicate a pre-existing tendency. In my 
Junior college year, I became, during the visit of Spurzheim, 
enamored of phrenology, which has been for many years 
[this was in 1872] the foundation on which I have worked, 
although I have not made it a special study. Admit, if 
you please, it is not exactly the true thing; and admit, if 
you will, that there is little form or system in it; yet I have 
worked with it much as the botanist worked with the Lin- 
nsean system of botany, the classification of which is very 
convenient, although an artificial one. There is no natural 
system that seems to correspond to human nature so nearly 
as phrenology does." 

Mr. Beecher's use of phrenology was rather as a con- 
venient classification and intelligible nomenclature of the 
faculties of the mind, than as a full acceptance of the 
phrenological theory of the physical, cerebral organs of 
those faculties. Former writers on mind considered the 
mental acts of attention, perception, conception, memory, 
etc., as faculties; while the phrenologists regarded these 
acts as merely the modes of action of the faculties, which they 
otherwise named and classified. Mr. Beecher thus stood 
between the two; and, as he so often did, took for his own 
practical purposes whatever of good he found in both, 
without committing himself fully in theory to either. 

With him was interested in phrenology the late O. S. 
Fowler, his classmate, a man who probably did more than 
any other to spread the practical knowledge and utilization 
of the system among the American people. It was in con- 
nection with phrenology, also, that young Beecher first 
began his experience as a public lecturer. 

In Mr. Beecher's Statement of Belief before the Congre- 



32 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

gational Association of New York and Brooklyn, Oct. 13, 
1882, he speaks of this matter and of other interesting 
points in his college course: — 

" I never undertook to preach by any system of philosophy 
based on phrenology, but the whole nomenclature of mental phe- 
nomena [in prevalent metaphysical philosophies] was so vague it 
had no individuality in it, no power of individualizing; it gener- 
alized all the way through ; while phrenology brought into view 
as distinct qualities, conibativeness, self-esteem, pride, the love of 
approbation, the love of praise, conscience, hope, reason— that is, 
causal and analogical reason. It gave definite names, so that one 
could read a man ; just as you can by taking type spell out a word, 
so by taking the different faculties you get to know the man. 
This working apparatus of phrenology I embraced. I analyzed 
men's actions by it. I could say to myself what sprang from this 
or that organ : here conscience is at work, here self-esteem, and so 
on. I do not undertake to say it was the most accurate system; 
but I do say it gave definiteness, it gave a man an insight into his 
fellow-man. It told him just where to strike and just what to 
strike with, and it was altogether a more practical, personal, and 
usable system than any of the metaphysical systems that had 
been in vogue. 

"Then, besides that, I early studied science with enthusiasm. I 
was a pupil of Professor Hitchcock at Amherst College. I was 
the first two years a dull scholar [in science] because I was study- 
ing literature, history, and belles lettres, but when I came to my 
junior and senior years I bent myself to mental philosophy and 
scientific studies, and I have kept along the line of the front of 
scientific investigation ever since, and these two elements have 
underlain and been very potent to form my theological state- 
ments. When, therefore, I am judged I ask to be judged by my 
philosophy, and not by a very different one which my critic may 
hold. 

"The result has been unfavorable in many cases, — that is to 
say, unfavorable to my reputation in the community. It set good 
men a great many times apart, by misunderstanding. It has 
caused grief to some men that were closely connected with me. 
I know I have their confidence as to my personal piety and as to 
my general conduct, but they fear I am straying so far from "the 
good old sound way" that it is a matter of mourning. I do not 
think so; I think I am coming nearer and nearer to the good old 
sound way. I think my views conform to Scripture a great deal 
more than those in which I was originally educated. In regard 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 33 

to scientific investigation, I see the day coming when one of the 
most powerful arguments for the inspiration of the Bible will be 
that it laid itself right along on the assumption of truths that 
were unknown at the time they were written and by the person 
by whom they were written. It is a remedial book. It lays 
itself along the line of human development and human want in a 
manner that no man can account for except by superintending 
Providence. My scientific and philosophical views lead me to a 
deeper and a deeper faith in the word of God." 

During his last two years in college, he was very active, 
— teaching in district schools, lecturing and zealously work- 
ing in Christian enterprises, and taking finally the regular 
care of Sunday services held in a school-house near Am- 
herst. During this period, he says, "growing constantly 
and warmly in sympathy with my father, in taking sides 
with orthodoxy that was in battle in Boston with Unitari- 
anism, I learned of him all the theology that was current 
at that time. In the quarrels also between Andover and 
East Windsor and New Haven and Princeton — I was at 
home in all these distinctions. I got the doctrines just 
like a row of pins on a paper of pins. I knew them as a 
soldier knows his weapons. I could get them in battle 
array." He was graduated from the college in 1834, and 
immediately went to Cincinnati, whither his father had 
been called, from the Park Street Church in Boston, to the 
presidency of Lane Theological Seminary, while at the 
same time he held the pastorate of the Second Presbyterian 
Church. Here, of course, Mr. Beecher received the cus- 
tomary theological training which every student in a Pres- 
byterian theological seminary is supposed to receive, but, 
moreover, he was drawn actively into the controversy be- 
tween Dr. Wilson, representing the old-school doctrines of 
what has been called "The Scotch - Irish Presbyterian 
Calvinistic Fatalism of God's Sovereignty " on the one 
hand, and on the other his father. Dr. Lyman Beecher, an 
ardent partisan of the then " New School Theology " of 
New England, pivoting on "man's free agency." 

The violent opposition of Dr. Wilson to Dr. Beecher cul- 
minated in the trial of the latter for heresy before the 



34 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

Presbytery. This issuing in a vindication of Dr. Beecher, 
Dr. Wilson appealed to the Synod, where the cause was 
tried again and with the same result. Before this came 
about, however, the contending forces had already clashed 
in various ways. Dr. Wilson seems to have been the 
aggressor in every instance. 

In the autobiography of Lyman Beecher* there is an 
amusing and characteristic description written by Miss 
Harriet E. Beecher, later known as Mrs. H. B. Stowe, of 
the examination of her brother George before Pres- 
bytery with the view to his ordination as a Presbyterian 
minister. Dr. Beecher's elder sons William and Edward 
were already in the ministry. A paragraph written by Dr. 
Beecher in one of the circular letters which they were ac- 
customed to send around to every branch of the family, 
— each one adding a few lines and passing the document 
on by mail to the nearest family station for further addi- 
tions, — gives a glimpse at the early family life in the 
matter of theology; which, be it remembered, is one of our 
objective points of inquiry. Miss Beecher's lively descrip- 
tion may be aptly prefaced by the paragraph here quoted: — 

"William, why do you not write to your father? Are you not 
my first-born son } Did I not carry you over bogs a-fishing, 
a-straddle of my neck, on my shoulders, and, besides clothing and 
feeding, whipping you often to make a man of you, as you are, 
and would not have been without .-^ Don't you remember study- 
ing theology with your father, sawing and splitting wood in that 
wood-house in Green street, Boston, near by where you found 
your wife ? Little do those know who have rented that tenement 
since, how much orthodoxy was developed and imbodied there; and 
now why should all this fruit of my labors be kept to yourself.''" 

Besides William and Edward, George was now about to 
be examined for the ministry; Henry Ward had just come 
from Amherst College, and had entered Lane Seminary; 
while Charles and Thomas and James were, in spite of tem- 
porary aberrations of fancy, destined to the same high call- 
ing. 

* " Autobiograph}', Correspondence, Etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D." 
Edited by Charles Beecher. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1865. 



HEREDITY, TRAIMIXG, AND EDUCATION. 35 

But to return to Miss Beecher and her Presbytery: — 

"At last the moderator calls the meeting to order. They pro- 
ceed to business. They are to examine a candidate. The candi- 
date is Mr. George Beecher, a New School man ; but that is not 
the worst — a Taylorite ! ! 

" Do you see, in the front pew, a tall, grave-looking man, of 
strong and rather harsh features, very pale, with a severe serious- 
ness of face, and with great formality and precision in every turn 
and motion.? Well, if you see him, that man is Dr. Wilson. His 
great ivory-headed cane leans on the side of the pew by him,. and 
in his hand he holds the Confession of Faith. 

"The candidate sits on the pulpit stairs, so that he may face the 
Presbytery, and the examining committee are called on : ' Dr. 
Wilson, in Philosophy.' Here follows, ' Mr. Beecher, what is 
matter and what is mind, and what is the difference 'twixt and 
'tween, and what is Mechanics, and Optics, and Hydrostatics, and 
what is Mental Philosophy, and what is Moral Philosophy, and 
what is right and wrong, and what is truth, and what is virtue, 
and what are the powers of the mind, and what is intellect, sus- 
ceptibilities, and will, and conscience,' — and everything else, world 
without end, amen ! After this the doctor's grave face gradually 
relaxes into a smile, which seems like the melting of a snow-drift 
as he says that he has 'pursued this branch of the examination as 
far as might be deemed expedient.' 

"'Mr. Moderator,' says one, 'I move that the examination be 
sustained.' ' I second it,' says another. 

"The moderator then says, ' Those who sustain this examina- 
tion say Ay.' 

" Now hark — ' Ay ! ay ! ay ! ' 

'"Those of contrary mind. No.' No answer. So this is over. 

" Next topic is now announced : 'Theology!' Now you may 
seethe brethren bending forward, and shuffling, and looking wise. 
Over in the pew opposite to us are the students of the Lane Sem- 
inary, with attentive eyes. There is Theodore Weld, all awake, 
nodding from side to side, and scarce keeping still a minute. 

'"The examiner in Theology, Brother Gallagher.' This is the 
tall son of Anak whom I have written of aforetime — the great 
Goliath, whose awful brows and camp-meeting hymns used so to 
awe and edify me. He rises very leisurely, and gives a lunge for- 
ward, precipitating his unwieldy size into a chair without much 
regard to graceful disposition, and with a deep, deliberate voice, 
begins. 

" The beauty of it all is that Gallagher is a warm friend to 



36 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

George, and of similar sentiments. The appointing him to ex- 
amine was a friendly motion of the moderator. . . He con- 
fined his examination merely to the broad and obvious truths 
of Christianity, and then sat down. 

" But now comes the fiery trial. The moderator announces, 
'Any of the brethren have a right to question the candidate.' 
You must have seen before now some of them fidgeting on their 
seats, and waiting their turn. Then such a storm of questions ■ 
rains in : — 

" ' Mr. Beecher, do you believe in the doctrine of election } Will 
you please to state your views on that subject.'' 'Mr. Beecher, 
do you believe in the imputation of Adam's sin.?' 'Mr. Beecher, 
do you believe infants are sinners as soon as they are born ? ' ' Do 
you believe that infants have unholy natures } ' ' Do you believe 
that men are able of themselves to obey the commandments of 
God ? ' ' Mr. Beeeher, do you believe men are active or passive 
in regeneration?' 'Mr. Beecher, do you make any distinction 
between regeneration and conversion?' 'Mr. Beecher, do you 
think that men are punished for the guilt of Adam's first sin?' 
'Do you believe in imputed righteousness?' 

" There was George — eyes flashing and hands going, turning 
first to right and then to left. ' If I understand your question, 
sir,' — ' I do not understand your terms, sir.' ' Do you mean by 
nature thus and so? or so? ' ' In what sense do you use the word 
imputation?' 'I don't exactly understand you, sir.' 'Yes, sir' (to 
right). ' No, sir' (to left). ' I should think so, sir' (in front). 

" So far I wrote when I heard George, and father, and Edward 
coming in from meeting; for Edward is with us — poked in like 
a ghost upon us one day just after George's examination. The 
first that father knew of the matter was seeing him going by the 
window, and exclaiming, 'There 's a man looks like Edward!' and 
the next minute we were all electrified by seeing him standing 
among us. 

"To-night Edward and Professor Sturtevant, father and George, 
have been holding a long chat. At last father and Edward •went 
down cellar to saw wood. Don't that seem natural ? I heard the 
word 'foreordination' through the parlor floor, so I knew what 
they were talking about.* I have come up and left them. . . . 

" Now to finish the account of Presbyter}^ The examination 
lasted nearly two hours and a half, after which the farther con- 



*This little touch reveals the theologic atmosphere in which the whole 
Beecher family was reared as perfectly as volumes of description could do. 
—Ed. 



HEREDITY, TRAIA'ING, AND EDUCATION. 37 

sideration of that subject was postponed till examination had 
taken place in other branches. The next day the Presbytery were 
called upon to see if they had any remarks to make upon the 
examination thus far. Then such a war of words ! 

" The way of proceeding is to call over the names of the whole 
Presbytery in order, and each one, when his name is called, has 
the liberty of rising and speaking as long as he will. The whole 
day was taken up in this way. I went only in the afternoon, and 
what I heard was (apart from moral considerations) sufficiently 
diverting. 

"There are men — one or two, I mean, — whose minds have 
been brought up in a catechetical treadmill — who will never say 
' Confession of Faith ' without taking off their hats, and who 
have altogether the appearance of thinking that the Bible is the 
next best book to the Catechism. These men are, of course, mor- 
tally afraid of heresy — or ' hear say,' as an old woman very perti- 
nently pronounced it — and their remarks on this subject were 
truly lucid. . . . 

"The discussion, as I have said, lasted all day. In the evening 
we came, and they went at it again. There was quite an audi- 
ence in the house, as preaching had been expected. All the 
Presbytery had finished their remarks except father and Dr. Wil- 
son, who, as the oldest, came last on the list. Father, as first 
called on, rose, and went through a regular statement of what 
he conceived to be the views expressed by the candidate, and a 
regular argument to show that they were in agreement with the 
Confession of Faith. He spoke well, clearly and persuasively, and 
was occasionally a little humorous. He began by saying that it 
was his belief that, however they might differ in points of opin- 
ion, they were all honest, well-intentioned men. ' We are honest !' 
(bringing down his fist). But then he said that there were some 
dangers in this meeting together in Presbytery; that ministers 
were so much accustomed to command the whole ship at home 
that they did not always feel exactly tractable in a Presbytery ; 
'and I hope,' said he, 'that, for the future, our elders will take 
better care of us ' (here a general smile went round among the 
elders). 

"Toward the close of the speech he said that, if the case 
should be carried up to the Synod, he should be prepared to 
prove even more fully many points; 'and in that case,' said he, 
bringing down his forefinger, ' I shall think myself happy, King 
Agrippa, to speak more fully of this matter.' He also insinuated 
that if Presbyteries, and Synods, and all the legislative bodies 



38 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

should turn out and reject all who held those sentiments, yet 
they could not stop their progress. 'No,' said he, 'we shall still 
live ; we shall stand on God's earth, and breathe his air, and 
preach his Gospel as we believe it.' 

"When father sat down Dr. Wilson rose up, and made a speech 
of about Jialf an hour, in which he stated that he believed that 
the candidate was not a Christian, and knew nothing experi- 
mentally about Christianity, and that he firmly believed that he 
and all those who held the same sentiments with him, ' would 
never see the gates of eternal bliss.' 

"This was abundantly courteous for Dr. Wilson, since he 
merely shut us out of heaven this time, without pronouncing 
sentence any more definitely. Many people say that it is 
altogether the mildest and most temperate speech they ever 
heard him make. After this speech the question was taken, 
though with much difficulty and opposition ; and on calling the 
roll, the examination was sustained by a majority of twenty- 
three. About twelve o'clock at night we found ourselves once 
more at home and in a state of high excitement, and sat up about 
half an hour longer to fight over the battle to Catharine, who 
had not been able to go out." 

Of course, years of such surroundings as this, followed, 
as were the events just related, by increasing bitterness on 
the side of the attacking party (who, to the credit of the 
Presbyteries concerned, seem to have got the worst of every 
judicial combat); the studies of the course itself; the en- 
suing trials of his father for heresy, together with the 
lively correspondence among friends and foes, and the 
family discussions of all these controverted points and 
persons, kept young Beecher's mind alert in study of all 
the close theological distinctions, and familiarized him 
with the whole ground as no mere seminary curriculum 
could have done. 

The result of this theological warfare, however, was 
very depressing to Henry Ward, who found less and less 
promise of fruitfulness in such a long continued course of 
dialectics, in which each combatant strongly held to his 
own views, and no result was ever reached. Indeed, he 
became convinced at that early day that men are most 
positive in theology about things of which they know the 
least; they are most dogmatical on what they call " funda- 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 39 

mentals " for which they find least solid foundations in 
the Holy Scriptures or in nature. He felt, already, after 
a childhood and youth, and a young manhood, spent in 
the atmosphere of disputatious theology, that (as he says 
in his sermon entitled " The Golden Net ") " the question 
is not to be with the plow and the harrow, but with the 
harvest. The farmer that raises the best wheat in the best 
quantity, and in the best manner, and constantly, is the 
best farmer, no matter what his tools are." 

In one of the family circular letters already alluded to, 
written shortly after young Beecher had got at his pastoral 
work, occurs the following passage addressed by him to this 
same brother George, who seems to have tended toward 
the belief in the possibility of Christian "perfection:" — 

"As to perfectionism, I am not greatly troubled with the 
fact of it in myself, or the doctrine of it in you ; for I feel sure 
that if you give yourself time and prayer, you will settle down 
right, whatever the right may be ; and I rejoice, on this account, 
that your judgment has led you to forbear publishing, because, 
after we have published, if we do not hit exactly right, there is a 
vehement temptation not to advance but rather to nurse and 
defend our published views. The treatises which have had influ- 
ence in this world from generation to generation are those which 
have been matured, re-thought, re-cast, delayed. Apples that 
ripen early are apt to be worm-eaten, and decay early at any rate ; 
late fruit keeps best." 

His early experiences however, while they taught him 
how easily men may be mistaken in their philosophizings 
even while most confident that they are correct, thus made 
him feel free all his life long to let his humor play pleas- 
antly about the heads of those who dogmatize; and yet, 
in the necessity of some systematic mode of regarding the 
truths of religion he was a firm believer, and not only can 
there be found in his works no passages inconsistent with 
this view but those are numerous which testify to his high 
estimate of reason in the philosophy of spiritual matters. 

In his "Yale Lectures" he says: — 

" It is very desirable, I think, that every preacher should have 
not merely gone through a system, but that he should have 
studied comparative theology. He ought to study that system 



40 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

on which he expects to base his ministry ; and it is also desirable 
that he should take cross-views of differing systems of theology — 
for a variety of reasons, You may think that you are going to 
preach some particular system, — but most of you will not, even 
if you try. You may take your teachers' views of theology and 
preach them for a while, but they will not suit you long. Every 
man who is fit to preach will, before many years, begin to have 
an outline of his own theology very distinctly marked out. But 
it is always necessary to know what other men have thought, to 
practice close thinking, to be drilled in sharp and nice discrim- 
ination, and to have a mind that is not slatternly and loose, but 

which knows how to work philosophically You must 

acquire the habit of thinking, of looking at truth, not in isolated 
and fragmentary forms, but in all its relations ; and of using it 
constantly as an instrument for producing good. You see I do 
believe in the science of theology, though I may not give my 
faith to any particular school of it in all points. But no school 
can dispense with a habit of thinking according to the laws of 
cause and effect. 

" Theology is osteology, and a skeleton is a poor thing to live 
with. But that which makes a man handsome is not being with- 
out bones. Some people say, because I occasionally hit theology 
a slap, that I do not believe in it. Indeed, I do believe in it ; 
but I believe in something else besides. Theology ought to be 
inside ; it is the frame on which you build everything. I believe 
in the succulency and the elasticity of the nerve, and the bloom 
and beauty of the skin that overlies it all ; but what would all 
these things be if there were not any bones there to lay them 
upon, and by which they could stand up and be operated .'' Men 
would all be gelatinous ; no better than so many jelly-fish. So 
theology has its own sphere and function." 

Thus, while he had from the first a clear estimate of the 
importance of theologic training, — of which he was getting 
a larger share than falls to the lot of the average student, 
— yet his soul was impatient for action. This youthful 
David felt oppressed and encumbered by the Saul's armor 
and weapons which he had been testing long enough 
to feel that his preparation for the fight was to come in 
another way. 

In a letter written to Dr. John H. Raymond,* about a 



*"Life and Letters of John H. Raymond, First President of Vassar 
College." New York: Foids, Howard, & Halbert, iSSi. 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 41 

year after his going East (1848), Mr. Beecher mentions a 
theological dispute then raging over Dr. Bushnell's teach- 
ings:— 

" I see no benefit in a controversy. It will be a fierce technical 
dispute about propositions, at the expense in the churches of 
vital godliness. . . . Others may blow the bellows and turn 
the doctrines in the fire and lay them on the anvil of controversy, 
and beat them with all sorts of hammers into all sorts of shapes; 
but I shall busy myself with using the sword of the Lord, not in 
forging it." 

This was the lesson which he learned very early. He 
well knew the processes by which the doctrines were 
fused and forged and changed from age to age, but he 
felt in himself the ability for a higher craft than the 
smith's; and how effectively he wielded his powers for 
fifty years the world knows. 

But there was another part of his course in the sem- 
inary which was of incalculable value. He says: — 

" I had the good fortune to be under Professor Stowe in my 
theological training. Those who have gone through a course 
with him need not be told how much knowledge he has, nor his 
keen and crystalline way of putting that knowledge. The ad- 
vantages which I derived from his teaching, his way of taking 
hold of Scripture, the knowledge I got of the Bible as a whole, 
are inestimable to me. In looking over my old note-books, 
which I filled independently of my course there, but which were 
partly in consequence of it and partly from teaching in the Bible 
class, I found I had gone then very nearly through the New 
Testament with close and careful study, and had formed an inti- 
mate acquaintance with it, before I began to preach regularly. 
In the early years of my ministry, I engaged in a great amount of 
exegetical study and interpretation of the word of God, having 
one service a week which was mainly devoted to that work. The 
preliminary acquisition of the power to do that will abbreviate 
your after-work more than you can tell. Do not believe that 
your enthusiasm will be a light always burning. You must have 
oil in your lamps. Study and patient labor are indispensable 
even to genius." 

This study of the Bible, under Professor Stowe and by 
himself, and especially during his last term at the Semin- 
ary while he was in charge of the Bible class, was really 



42 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

his salvation from the depression and condition of doubt 
into which he had been thrown by tiie theological combats 
just alluded to. For one of his brothers, surcharged with 
doubts, had thrown up the ministry (although he after- 
ward returned to it again), and Henry Ward himself during 
the hot rage of pro-slavery rioting in Cincinnati and the 
great anti-slavery excitement in the seminary itself, had 
for some months been actively engaged in editing the Cin- 
cijinati Journal, by means of which his ideas and feelings 
were drawn to the possibility of his escaping the ministe- 
rial life and adopting journalism as his profession. That he 
would have been one of the country's great editors, no one 
can doubt; yet how much would have been lost to journal- 
ism itself, as well as to the cause of God and the up-build- 
ing of man in the multitudinous avenues through which 
this man's influence has been felt, had he not been drawn 
as he was, by the inspiration imparted to him in the study 
of the Scriptures, to the founding of his whole professional 
life upon the broad basis of God's work in the world ! 

From this close and loving study he received two lumi- 
nous thoughts. He speaks of the time, 

" When it pleased God to reveal to my wandering soul the idea 
that it was His nature to love a man in his sins for the sake of 
helping him out of them ; that he did not do it out of compliment 
to Christ, or to a ' law ' or a ' plan of salvation;' but from the full- 
ness of His great heart. . . . Time went on, and next came 
the disclosure of a Christ ever present with me — a Christ that 
never was far from me, but was always near me, as a companion 
and friend, to uphold and sustain me. This was the last and the 
best revelation of God's Spirit to my soul." 

Of course it is not to be supposed that the inspiration of 
these great ideas had now been for the first time presented 
to young Beecher's mind, but simply this: his whole train- 
ing and education thus far had been along the line of the 
Calvinistic theology, involving chiefly the idea of God's 
sovereignty and power. Aided by the controversies of the 
time, then beginning to break away from under the mighty 
shadow of that truth, controversies aiming to establish the 
theory of man's free agency and consequent responsibility, 



HEREDITY, TRAINING, AND EDUCATION. 43 

and giving to human individuality a dignity which the older 
theology did not allow to it, — he was yet hampered and 
obstructed by the sense of argumentation; his heart, that 
tremendous engine of moral and spiritual power, was not 
satisfied. But, from the time when his soul was lifted up 
by these two great truths — God's nature as manifested by 
Jesus the Christ to love man in his sins for the sake of help- 
ing him out of them, and the sustaining Christ ever present 
with individual men ("a real presence" of perennial spiritual 
influence), — he sprang to his work with an ardor that was 
unquenched to the end of his life. 

God's love because of his fatherhood; man's worth and 
mutual brotherhood because of his sonship to God: these 
were the two halves of the one great theme which from 
that time to the day of his final silence, underlay his life, 
his words, his works. 

Indeed his own playful way of putting this is as apt as 
any could be: "I was like the man in the story, to whom 
the fairy gave a purse with a single piece of money in it, 
which he found always came again as soon as he had 
spent it. I thought I had found at least one thing to 
preach; I found it included everything." 

With the close of his theological studies in 1837, young 
Beecher married Miss Eunice White Bullard, a sister of 
one of his classmates and a daughter of Dr. Bullard of 
Worcester, Mass. Their betrothal had lasted faithfully 
for seven years, and their faithful companionship in mar- 
ried life lasted for fifty years, his death in 1887 rounding 
the half century. 

Here, then, concludes the first period of Henry Ward 
Beecher's life. We have tried to sketch — or rather to have 
him sketch — the inherited traits, the early influences, that 
combined to give him his outfit. He was not one whose 
education was finished when he left the theological sem- 
inary. To the day of his death he learned, he grew, he 
increased the talent committed to his charge; but on leav- 
ing the seminary he was armed and equipped, and in- 
spired with the best thought of his life. 



44 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



III. 

TEN YEARS OF MISSIONARY WORK. 

It is neither possible nor desirable in this place to give 
a biography of Mr. Beecher. The object sought is sim- 
ply to gather some memoirs going to show the main 
sources of his power as an instructor of public thought 
and a stimulator of public feeling, the principles from 
which he drew his own inspiration, and the consistency 
with which he maintained them under whatever variations 
of the influences about him, — whether social, religious, 
ecclesiastical, or political. 

He preached for a brief time in the Presbyterian Church 
in Covington, Kentucky, but soon received a call from 
Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a small town about twenty miles 
west of Cincinnati, where for two years he labored in his 
little low wooden building, which would seat one hundred 
and fifty people, the church membership consisting of 
twenty members, — as he puts it, " nineteen of them were 
women, and the other was nothing," — he and his young 
wife living in two rooms over a provision store, with a 
salary of two hundred and fifty dollars guaranteed by the 
Home Missionary Society, and a possible one hundred and 
fifty more from the parish, paid if at all in provisions. 
Less than $i.io a day, if all was paid ! When we read 
such figures as these and think of the self-denying labors 
and privations of those who labor for God and man in our 
frontier settlements, it seems clear that when, many years 
afterwards, Mr. Beecher was trying to arouse the manliness 
of the working-men to meet the rigors of hard times, and 
said that if all they could get was a dollar a day they 



TEN YEARS OF MISSIONARY WORK. 45 

should make that suflfice, he well knew what he was talk- 
ing about. 

Mr. Beecher's own pictures of these days of destitution 
are very graphic, but we cannot stop to consider them in 
detail; and yet these two years were among the most val- 
uable of his training-time, bringing him face-to-face and 
hand-to-hand with the ills and miseries of actual privation 
and poverty as well as the hard pastoral work of a Home 
Missionary in a malarial district among a scattered people. 
He was blessed with health, vigor, perseverance, and 
already an intuitive way of getting at people's hearts. 

He says: — 

" There lived over on the other side of the street in Lawrence- 
burg, where first I had my settlement, a very profane man, who 
was counted ugly. I understood that he had said some very 
bitter things of me. I went right over to his store, and sat down 
on the counter to talk with him. I happened in often, — day in 
and day out. My errand was to make him like me. I did make 
him Hke me, — and all the children too ; and when I left, two or 
three years later, it was his house that was opened to me and all 
my family for the week after I gave up my room. And to the 
day of his death I do not believe the old man could mention my 
name without crying." 

Thus it was that he learned early in his career the 
secret of winning the sympathies of the men whom he de- 
sired to influence. He relates in one place his visit to the 
manufacture of papier mache in Birmingham, England. He 
was noticing the various processes from room to room, 
until, coming to where they give the final polish, he was 
told that they had tried everything in the world for pol- 
ishing and at last had been convinced that there was no 
leather or other substance that had such power to polish 
to the very finest smoothness, as the living leather in its 
vital state, — the human hand. " It is very much so," says 
he, " with people. You can teach them from the pulpit 
in certain large ways, but there are some things vou can- 
not do except by putting your very hand upon them." 

During these two years young Beecher made his mark 
not only in the little community where he was working 



46 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

but also in Cincinnati, where he occasionally preached in 
his father's pulpit, at the Second Presbyterian Church. 
In 1839 he was called to Indianapolis, then a place of 
about four thousand inhabitants, the capital of the State. 
The "new school" and "old school" theological discus- 
sions were still disturbing the churches (as when indeed 
are they not!) and he was called to a new congregation 
which had swarmed off from their more conservative 
brethren. He had now a larger salary ($600 — say $1.65 
per diem) but also larger expenses, and was compelled 
still, although not suffering from positive poverty, to exer- 
cise rigid economy and live in great simplicity. 

As to preaching, he had, as we have seen, had consider- 
able experience. He had practiced public speaking from 
the time of his Sophomore year at college, — making tem- 
perance speeches, holding conference meetings, and in 
various ways learning to overcome his natural diffidence 
and acquiring power to face people and to think on 
his feet. In the little Lawrenceburg church he had 
preached the best sermons that he knew how to get up, 
but was constantly discouraged with his own efforts. He 
says: "I remember distinctly that every Sunday night I 
had a headache. I went to bed every Sunday night with 
a vow registered that I would buy a farm and quit the 
ministry." 

But while thus slowly feeling his way toward the power 
of setting forth truth in a way to lay hold on the minds of 
men, he was diligently filling up his own mind. He says : — 

" I read Robert South, through and through ; I saturated my- 
self with South. I formed much of my style and my handling of 
texts on his methods. I obtained a vast amount of instruction 
and assistance from others of those old sermonizers, who were as 
familiar to me as my own name. I read Barrow, Howe, Sherlock, 
Butler, and Edwards particularly. I preached a great many ser- 
mons while reading these old men, and upon their discourses I 
often founded the framework of my own. After I had preached 
them I said to myself, 'That will never do; I wouldn't preach that 
again for the world ; ' but I was learning, and nobody ever tripped 
me up." 



TEN YEARS OF MISSIONARY WORK. 47 

In fact he learned slowly, in spite of his father's power 
as a preacher and an effective mover of men, and of his 
own facility and popularity as a speaker. He himself tells 
us, " For the first three years of my ministry I did not make 
a single sinner wink." He was gaining in reputation, but 
that was not what he was aiming at; and it was not until 
the beginning of a period of intense religious excitement, 
which indeed grew largely out of his own efforts, that at 
last he seems to have come to something of the power 
which so largely abode with him from that time forward. 
More and more constantly did he study the life and the 
teachings of Him who spoke as never man spake, earnestly 
seeking the secret by means of which it was that the com- 
mon people heard Him gladly. He also gave zealous study 
to the doings and sayings of those first Christian mission- 
aries, the apostles, and both while at Lawrenceburg and in 
the first portion of his Indianapolis pastorate, he did much 
to furnish himself with the best of material and the best of 
models for his work. He says: — 

"I owe more to the Book of Acts and the writings of the 
Apostle Paul than to all other books put together. I was sent 
into the wilderness of Indiana to preach among the poor and 
ignorant, and I lived in my saddle. My library was in my saddle- 
bags ; I went from camp-meeting to camp-meeting, and from log 
hut to log hut. I took my New Testament, and from it I got 
that which has been the very secret of any success that I have 
had in the Christian ministry." 

And again: — 

"When I had lived at Indianapolis the first year, I said, 'There 
was a reason why when the apostles preached they succeeded, 
and I will find it out if it is to be found out.' I took every single 
instance in the record where I could find one of their sermons, 
and analyzed it, and asked myself, 'What were their circum- 
stances } Who were the people ? What did he do ? ' And I 
studied the sermons until I got this idea: that the apostles were 
accustomed first to feel for a ground on which the people and they 
stood together; a common ground where they could meet. Then 
they stored up a large number of the particulars of knowledge 
that belonged to everybody ; and when they had got that knowl- 
edge which everybody would admit placed in a proper form be- 



48 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

fore the minds of the people, then they brought it to bear upon 
them with all their excited heart and feeling. That was the first 
definite idea of taking aim that I had in my mind. ' Now,' said 
I, 'I will make a sermon so.' I remember it just as well as if it 
were yesterday. First, I sketched out the things we all know, 
. . . and in that way I went on with my 'you all knows,' until 
I had about forty of them. When I had got through that, I 
turned round and brought it to bear upon them with all my 
might; and there were seventeen men awakened under that ser- 
mon. I nev'^er felt so triumphant in my life. I cried all the way 
home. I said to myself, ' Now I know how to preach.' I could 
not make another sermon for a month that was good for any- 
thing. I had used all my powder and shot on that one. But, for 
the first time in my life, I had got the idea of taking aiin. I 
soon added to it the idea of analyzing the people I was preaching 
to, and so taking aim for specialties. Of course that came grad- 
ually and later, with growing knowledge and experience." 

And again: — 

" It is easier to study law and become a successful practitioner, 
it is easier to study medicine and become a successful practitioner, 
than it is to study the human soul all through — to know its living 
forms, and to know the way of talking to it and coming into sym- 
pathy with it." 

We have seen (p. 24) how he had learned the lesson of 
thoroughness, in the preparation for his " Lectures to 
Young Men." At the time of his Indianapolis pastorate, 
the assembling in that city of the State Legislature brought 
together a great many people of all kinds, and as the chief 
city of the State it was naturally alive not only with good 
influences, but also with bad, and at one time vice seemed 
to fairly riot there. Gambling and drinking and all forms 
of evil flourished rankly. Seeing here an opportunity, 
young Beecher prepared himself by a careful study of 
facts, and then delivered that series of lectures which when 
gathered and published (as most of his early books were, 
for the pecuniary benefit of other people), formed his first 
book. The venerable Dr. Leonard Bacon, contemporary 
and friend of the older Beecher, wrote: — 

" I remember admiring its force of thought and inspiration, its 
wealth of illustration, its insight into human nature under the 
various phases of individual character, its boldness of assault and 



TEN YEARS OF MISSIONARY WORK. 49 

denunciation, its earnestness in warning young men against moral 
dangers, and the electric force of its incitements to manly aspira- 
tions and manly living. In every lecture I seemed to see sparks 
as from the red-hot iron on the old anvil, and to hear the old 
Boanerges thundering with a youthful voice." 

These lectures produced an intense excitement in the 
community. Many men of high social and political stand- 
ing felt themselves aimed at, and were wrathful; but the 
city thronged to hear them, consciences were aroused, per- 
ceptions enlightened, hearts touched, and the result was a 
revival of religion that shook the community. This plain 
presentation of simple truth with a bold hand, set forth in 
dramatic forms, followed up by moral instruction and spirit- 
ual incitement, really struck the key-note of the man's life 
and labor. 

But it was not only boldness that he learned, but deftness 
also was coming to his modes of management. 

When he was at Indianapolis, he says: — 

" Nobody was allowed to say a word on the subject of slavery. 
They were all red-hot out there then ; and one of my elders said, 
' If an Abolitionist comes here I will head a mob to put him down." 
I was a young preacher. I had some pluck ; I felt, and it grew in 
me, that that was a subject that ought to be preached upon. . . 
. . . The question was, how shall I do \y} I recollect one of 
the earliest efforts I made in that direction was in a sermon on 
some general topic. It was necessary to illustrate a point, and I 
did it by picturing a father ransoming his son from captivity 
among the Algerines, and glorying in his love of liberty and his 
fight against bondage. They all thought I was going to apply it 
to slavery; but I did not, I applied it to my subject and it passed 
off: and they all drew a long breath. It was not long before I 
had another illustration from that quarter, and so, before I had 
been there a year, I had gone all over the sore spots of slavery, in 
illustrating the subject of Christian experience and doctrine. It 
broke the ice." 

The above passage occurs in his instructions to young 
preachers on the subject of Illustrations, and it seems worth 
while to include another paragraph pursuing the same 
topic: — 

" You may go down to the brook under the willows and angle 
for the trout that everybody has been trying to catch, but in vain. 



5© HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

You go splashing and tearing along, throwing in your line, pole 
and all. Do you think you can catch them that way? No, in- 
deed; you must begin afar off and quietly, if need be drawing 
yourself along on the grass and perhaps even on your belly, until 
you come where through the quivering leaves you see the flash 
of the sun; and then slowly and gently you throw your line so 
that the fly on its end falls as light as a gossamer upon the placid 
surface of the brook. The trout will think ' That is not a bait 
thrown to catch me: there is nobody there,' and rises to the fly, 
takes it, — and you take him." 

He earnestly strove both in spirit of life and in method 
of labor to follow Jesus, that he might be made a fisher of 
men. 

Perhaps one of the most fruitful fields of the infinite 
variety of illustrations used by Mr. Beecher throughout 
his life w^as his love for nature, his profound and extensive 
knowledge of its processes and productions, his apprecia- 
tion of its myriad forms and sounds of beauty, the senti- 
ments which it is capable of arousing in the human soul, 
and the multiform similitudes which it offers to the condi- 
tions and development of human life. His facile control 
of this vast field of course did not come by accident. He 
always loved and sympathized with the life of the natural 
world from his earliest childhood, and much of his boy- 
hood and youth was spent in the meadows and along the 
brooks and among the woods. The cultivation of fiowers 
and shrubs and of all manner of vegetables had been his 
delight in youth and his necessity when life-work began. 
During his two years at Mount Pleasant Academy, while 
preparing for college, he had found a sympathetic instructor 
m an old gardener, who taught him much, and he had never 
been without a vital and practical interest in those mat- 
ters. In his preface to the first edition of " Pleasant Talk 
about Fruits, Flowers, and Farming," a collection of his 
articles from the Western Farmer and Gardener, which 
he edited while he was in Indianapolis (by way of resting 
from his pulpit labors), he says: — 

" It may be of some service to the young as showing how valu- 
able the fragments of time may become, if mention is made of 
the way in which we became prepared to edit this journal. The 



TEN YEARS OF MISSIONARY WORK. 51 

continued taxation of daily preaching, extending through months, 
and once through eighteen consecutive months without the ex- 
ception of a single day, began to wear upon our nerves, and 
made it necessary for us to seek some relaxation. Accordingly we 
used, after each week-night's preaching, to drive the sermon out 
of our heads by some alterative reading. 

"In the State Library were Loudon's works— his encyclopedias 
of Horticulture, of Agriculture, and of Architecture. We fell 
upon them, and, for years, almost monopolized them. In our 
little one-story cottage, after the day's work was done, we pored 
over these monuments of an almost incredible industrj^ and read, 
we suppose, not only every line, but much of it many times over. 
. . . . In this way, through several years, we gradually accu- 
mulated materials and became familiar with facts and principles, 
which paved the way for our editorial labors. ' Lindley's Horti- 
culture ' and ' Gray's Structural Botany ' came in as constant com- 
panions. And when, at length, through a friend's liberality we 
became the recipients of the London Gardener's Chronicle, edited 
by Professor Lindley, our treasures were inestimable. Many 
hundred times have we lain awake for hours, unable to throw off 
the excitement of preaching, beguiling the time with imaginary 
visits to the Chiswick Garden, and to the more than Oriental 
magnificence of the Duke of Devonshire's grounds at Chatsworth. 
We have had long discussions, in that little bedroom at Indianap- 
olis, with Van Mons about pears, with Vibert about roses, with 
Thompson and Knight about everything under the heavens in the 
horticultural world. 

" This employment of waste hours not only answered a purpose 
of soothing excited nerves then, but brought us into such rela- 
tions to the material world, that we speak with entire moderation 
when we say that all the estates of the richest duke in England 
could not have given us half the pleasure which we derived from 
pastures, waysides, and unoccupied prairies." 

There was probably no one feature of Mr. Beecher's 
writing or speaking upon any topic whatsoever, so notice- 
able as his accurate and apparently intuitive knowledge of 
the natural world. But his knowledge was worked for; 
the wonder was his power of assimilation. " Natural 
genius," he says, " is but the soil, which, let alone runs to 
weeds. If it is to bear fruit and harvest worth the reap- 
ing, it must be plowed and tilled with incessant care." 
And again: "Though a man be born to genius, a natural 



52 HEXRY WARD BEECHER. 

reader and a natural reasoner, these endowments give him 
but the outlines of himself, and filling up means incessant, 
painstaking study and work. ... It may be impas- 
sioned, facile, and fruitful, remunerating him as it goes on; 
nevertheless, there must be incessant work. Work may be 
light, unburdensome, as full of song as the merry brook 
that turns the miller's wheel; but no wheel is ever turned 
without the rush and weight of the stream upon it." 

And yet again: " No man can preach well except out of 
an abundance of well-wrought material. Some sermons 
seem to start up suddenly, soul and body; but no, they are 
the product of years of experience. . . . It is only the 
form, like the occasion, that is extemporaneous. No man 
preaches except out of the stores that have been gathered 
in him." 

And now, by way of rounding up the period of his West- 
ern ministry, — the two years at Lawrenceburg and the 
eight at Indianapolis, — let us make one more quotation 
illustrative of his power of adapting truth to circumstances; 
showing his growth in the art of maintaining principles 
which should be consistent in themselves, while presenting 
different fronts to different winds: — 

" When my ministry was in the West, what did I find ? A loose 
and heterogeneous mass of men who had come from everywhere, 
— the detritus from the stream of immigration. As at the delta 
of the Mississippi is gathered refuse which floats down from the 
region above, so in the West were gathered human beings from 
almost every nation on the globe; and there the principle of in- 
dividualism was the predominant one. I insisted upon the sanc- 
tity of the Sabbath day; I insisted upon the absolute necessity of 
churches and church forms; and I insisted upon the indispensa- 
bleness of authority and of obedience to that authority. I 
preached every Sunday against individualism, and in favor of 
association. By and by I was transferred to the East ; and there 
I found society hard-ribbed, vigorous. Men were lopped off on 
every side to make them fit into crowded populations. Society 
was tyrannical. And ever since I came East I have fought society, 
and tried to get individual men to be free, independent, and large. 
I was right both times. I did not care for abstract theories. My 
object was to get ineit. . . . Now if I had to study the proper- 



TEN YEARS OF MISSIONARY WORK. 53 

tions of a philosophy, I should probably study in such a way that 
I would save my philosophy but lose my men. . . . Who cries 
for symmetry in medicine? Symmetry in health is what we want." 

Mr. Beecher's Western life was full of distresses and dis- 
comforts, but glowing with conscious advancement in 
inner life and in outward success in his calling. He said 
during a visit to Indianapolis in 1876: " I went to Indian- 
apolis in the fall of 1839 with a little sick babe in my arms 
which showed the first symptons of recovery after eating 
blackberries which I gathered by the way. The city had 
then a population of four thousand [now, in 1887, one 
hundred and fifty thousand]. With the exception of two 
or three streets there were no ways along which could not 
be seen the original stumps of the forest; I have bumped 
against them in a buggy too often not to be well assured of 
the fact. Here I preached my first real sermon; here, 
for the first time I strove against death in behalf of a child, 
and was defeated; here I built a house and painted it with 
my own hands; here I had my first garden, and became 
the bishop of flowers for this diocese; here I first joined 
the editorial fraternity, and edited the Farmer and Gar- 
dener ; here I had my first taste of chills and fever; here 
for the first time, I waded to church ankle-deep in mud 
and preached with pantaloons tucked into my boot-tops. 

. . It is now a mighty city, full of foundries, manu- 
factories, wholesale stores, and with a magnificent court- 
house, beautiful dwellings, noble churches, wide and fine 
streets, and railroads more than I could mention, radiating 
to every point of the compass." He alludes in another 
passage to " the days of sickness, cliills and fever, the 
gardening days, my first editorial experience, my luck in 
horses and pigs, my house-building, and not a few scrapes; 
being stalled in the mud, half drowned in crossing rivers, 
long, lonely forest rides, camp meetings, preachings in 
camps, sleepings in the open air." 

If the physical aspects of these days were d^rk to the 
sturdy, vigorous, elastic preacher, to his young wife, — 
nurtured in the serenity of a New England town, accus- 
tomed to the conveniences and pleasant industries of a 



54 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

New England home, — this being plunged into the rude- 
nesses of an almost frontier life and the drain both phys- 
ical and mental of a rapidly increasing family of little 
children, was darkness almost unrelieved. Her health 
failed, her spirits were depressed, and her condition was a 
source of the keenest anxiety to the loving husband. The 
spring of 1847, therefore, found young Beecher in a very 
uncertain state of mind. Vital and springy in bodily con- 
dition; mentally active, intense, out-reaching, greedily 
acquiring and prodigally pouring forth the treasures acces- 
sible to him; encouraged, stimulated, conscious of grow- 
ing power, and having a heart aflame with zeal for 
Christ and love for man, — he was, on the other hand, 
weighted with wearing anxiety for his dear wife, worrying 
about his children and home, and — even in intellectual 
matters — while craving books and art and music and the 
means of a wider and finer culture, he was cabined, cribbed, 
confined, by his own poverty and the scanty resources of 
the community in which he lived. So that all causes com- 
bined to make it a glad thing for him to receive, as he did 
at that time, an invitation to go East with his wife to at- 
tend what was then known as " Anniversary Week," in 
New York City, and to deliver one of the addresses before 
the Home Missionary Society. 

As it seemed then, it was in itself the great event of his 
life; as we see it now, it was in itself a very small affair, 
except as being the initiative step of his real career. 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 55 



IV. 

PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 

Congregationalism, as a denomination, had down to 
1840 made but small progress outside of New England. A 
movement for its extension began very actively about 
that time. One of the very earliest efforts of that activity 
was the founding of the Church of the Pilgrims in the city 
of Brooklyn in 1844. Shortly after its successful inaugura- 
tion, some of its members determined to start another Con- 
gregational church and proceeded actively to accomplish 
that, by purchasing the building of the Old First Presby- 
terian Church, then just vacated for a new one. The first 
services were held on Sunday, May 16, 1847. 

Mr. Beecher, who had met with a welcome at the Anni- 
versary meetings in New York largely on account of his 
father and elder brothers, had made a marked impression 
there by his own addresses. Mr. William P. Cutter, of 
New York, who had known and admired him in the West, 
had already mentioned him to the gentlemen who had 
initiated the new church project; and the young preacher 
was invited to be present at the opening services of the 
church and preach the first sermons, which he did with 
marked acceptability, morning and evening. The church 
was organized on Sunday, June 13, with twenty-one mem- 
bers. The wife of one of the promoters had suggested 
"Plymouth Brethren" as a name, and "Plymouth Church" 
was the title adopted. Young Beecher, who had gone on 
to Boston after his first preaching, returned a few weeks 
later and preached again, for two successive Sundays; 
the consequence being that on June 14, 1847, he was 



56 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

unanimously invited by the church and society to become 
their pastor. With many misgivings as to the wisdom of 
leaving his Presbyterian associations and his well-loved 
parish in the West, Mr. Beecher was influenced primarily 
by the evident improvement in his wife's health and also by 
the marked heartiness and earnestness and activity of the 
people who had called him to work with them, and decided 
to accept the invitation; preferring it to a position offered 
him with the old Park Street Church in Boston (where his 
father and his brother Edward had preceded him), because 
in Plymouth he should be able to begin the work in his 
own way. From that day, during the forty years which 
intervened until his death, his history and that of Ply- 
mouth Church are one and the same. They are known to 
all men in America, and throughout the English-speaking 
world more widely than those of any other man or church 
in Christendom. It will not therefore be necessary to do 
more than touch upon a few salient points; and those, as 
bearing upon his personality and methods of working. 

When in October, 1847, Henry Ward Beecher assumed 
the pastorate of Plymouth Church, he was thirty-four 
years and four months old. His compact, vigorous fig- 
ure, five feet nine inches in height; his long dark hair; 
broad brow; large blue eyes, — now luminous with in- 
tensity, now twinkling with merriment; rather large, 
straight nose; peculiarly well formed mouth, mobile with 
feeling; ruddy complexion; and a garb decidedly uncler- 
ical, presented an unusual appearance. 

The first thing he did was to have the pulpit cut away, 
and upon the broad platform was set a rather low ma- 
hogany desk, open beneath. He had the natural instinct of 
the orator, and felt that for him to get at his listeners the 
listeners must be able to see the speaker. Throughout 
his whole career it is rather remarkable that one so 
apparently careless of appearances should have been, as 
this man Avas, uniformly successful in doing the right 
thing so far as concerned all physical carriage in his pub- 
lic appearances. His instincts were those of a gentleman, 
and whenever he shocked the sense of propriety of church- 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 57 

goers (as he occasionally did), it was never by any ungain- 
liness or impropriety of action, but always by some sudden 
and unexpected turn of thought, of a kind to which peo- 
ple were unaccustomed in Sunday services. Yet, even so, 
those little shocks to their conventional nerves invariably 
resulted in arousing attention and fixing the listeners' 
mind upon the thought to be presented. They were 
sometimes the unconscious results of his original way of 
looking at things, and sometimes the intentional arts of 
the orator, who sought not to exhibit himself as a model 
clergyman but to "catch men." 

To shov/ the underlying reason why he took his stand 
upon a platform rather than in the pulpit, read this little 
passage from his " Lectures on Preaching:" — 

" It is not necessary that a man, because he may not be able to 
stand like the statue of Apollo, should stand ungracefully. He 
loses, unconsciously, a certain power ; for, although he does not 
need a very fine physical figure (which is rather a hindrance, I 
think), yet he should be pleasing in his bearing and gestures. A 
man who is very beautiful and superlatively graceful sets people 
to admiring him ; they make a kind of monkey god of him, and it 
stands in the way of his usefulness. From this temptation most 
of us have been mercifully delivered. On the other hand, what 
we call naturalness, fitness, good taste, and propriety are to be 
sought. You like to see a man come into your parlor with, at 
least, ordinary good manners and some sense of propriety, and 
what you require in your parlor you certainly have a right to ex- 
pect in church. One of the reasons why I condemn these churns 
called pulpits is that they teach a man bad habits ; he is heedless 
of his posture and learns bad tricks behind these bulwarks. He 
thinks that people will not see them. So with gestures. There 
are certain people who will never make many gestures, but they 
should see to it that what they do make shall be graceful and 
appropriate. There are others who are impulsive, and so full of 
feeling that they throw it out in every direction, and it is, there- 
fore, all the more important that their action shall be shorn 
of awkwardness and constrained mannerism. Now and then a 
man is absolutely dramatic, as, for instance, John B. Gough, who 
could not speak otherwise. It is unconscious with him. It is 
inherent in all natural orators ; they put themselves at once, un- 
consciously, in sympathy with the things they are describing." 



58 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

We shall return to this matter again when considering 
Mr. Beecher's oratory, but meanwhile, it is significant of 
what his life and work among the people had done for 
him during the ten years of missionary labor in the West, 
that his first act w^hen he found himself raised to an 
Eastern pulpit was to get out of it nearer to his hearers. 

He had accepted the responsibility of a position in the 
city already called the " City of Churches," itself well fur- 
nished wuth clergymen of ability and repute, and practi- 
cally a part of that greater city, its near neighbor across 
the East River. As to comparing himself with others or 
worrying about his new and untried field, these unneces- 
sary girdings were entirely foreign to his nature. He 
worked for the love of working; the grinding sense of re- 
sponsibility he felt to be uncongenial to the faith and 
trust of a Christian life. He refused to entertain anxieties, 
but put in all the forces he possessed as a farmer puts in 
his labor and his seed; and he left the germination, like 
the sunshine and the rain, to the providence of God. He 
says in one place: " In general I have never performed m}- 
work but once; whereas many others perform theirs three 
times, — first by anticipation; then in realization; and 
afterward by rumination." 

He began as he afterward continued, and his own de- 
scription of it will be the best. He says: — 

" I have often been asked by what secret I retain health and 
vigor under labors multiform and continuous. I owe much to a 
good constitution inherited from my parents, not spoiled by 
youthful excesses or weakened by over-study ; much also to an 
early-acquired knowledge of how to take care of myself, to secure 
invariably a full measure of sleep, to regard food as an engineer 
does fuel (to be employed economically, and entirely with refer- 
ence to the work to be done by the machine) ; much to the habit 
of economizing social forces, and not wasting in needless conver- 
sation and pleasurable hilarities the spirit that would carry me 
through many days of necessary work ; but, above all, to the 
possession of a hopeful disposition and natural courage, to sym- 
pathy with men, and to an unfailing trust in God ; so that I have 
always worked for the love of working." 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 59 

With these interior impulses, and wise powers of guid- 
ance and restraint; with a mind well stored by years of 
studious reading and thinking; with ten years' growth in 
the experience of working directly upon the souls of men, 
and an original aptitude in the "art of putting things" by 
which he had already grown facile and expert, it is not to 
be wondered at that this man found himself instantly at 
home in the turmoil of the great cities where thronged the 
very game he was after — men. Lovers of the conventional 
complained that he was not smooth, he lacked polish; which 
perhaps was not without a certain amount of truth, for he 
took hold like a new file. Not only individual men, but 
the community at large, very soon felt that there was a 
fresh and unusual kind of force at work. 

The old church building was cramped and packed with 
the throngs, and when after a few months it took fire and 
was badly damaged, the people of the church saw that it 
was their opportunity not to rebuild the old, but to build 
anew ; and they reared the great broad-shouldered ampli- 
tude of Plymouth Church as it stands to-day. 

True to his intention of getting at the people, Mr. 
Beecher had the organ, with space for a large volunteer 
choir, set at the back of the platform, in front of the audi- 
ence, thus thrusting the speaker well forward into the 
midst of the throng. He did away with the broad middle 
aisle, and filled that cold, blank space with people. The 
pews were arranged, so far as possible, in circling fashion 
about the platform. The galleries were about twice the 
ordinary depth, and the seating capacity of the house about 
twenty-seven hundred, although with the hinged aisle-seats 
which they were soon compelled to add, the congregation 
usually numbered about three thousand. Not a dollar was 
spent upon unnecessary ornament, but everything was 
plain and simple, the main object being to have a well- 
lighted, well-ventilated, commodious audience-room, of 
good acoustic properties, arranged to seat the people with 
their faces convergent toward the platform, and, with the 
great choir before them, forming a natural social circle 



6o HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

in which it would be easy to focalize thought and feeling, 
whether for instruction, prayer, or praise. 

Mr. Beecher recognized the danger of bareness and lean- 
ness which always hangs over the non-liturgical churches. 
The Roman service, and to a great extent the Episcopal 
service, touch the devout imagination, reaching toward if 
not actually inspiring veneration and awe, and seeking for 
chords whose response is worship; and he felt that the 
characteristic fault of the plainer church services was their 
preponderance of instruction and lack of provision for the 
element of worship. This he proposed to supp]}^ and with 
a very grand success did supply, by means of music, and 
especially by means of so interesting the entire audience 
that it should not only listen and be played upon, but should 
also take part. He was, in fact, together with that noble 
old organist, John Zundel, the pioneer of congregational 
singing in America. 

It was not until 1S55 that he succeeded in getting his 
" Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes " published, 
and the people all furnished with words and music so as to 
make Plymouth congregational singing the fine art that it 
became shortly after that; and yet, from the very begin- 
ning, with a large voluntary choir and a persistent urging 
upon the congregation that they should take hold, and the 
use of tunes that everybody knew, he did succeed in bring- 
ing in that powerful aid, — that '* provision for the esthetic 
feeling, the fancy and the imagination and the more facile 
emotions, which is not provided for by any framework fur- 
nished to the preacher, and which, according to his various 
abilities and endowments or moods, circumstances may or 
may not have partially provided for in him." 

In his instructions ("Yale Lectures on Preaching") on the 
relations of music to worship, he goes very carefully and 
suggestively into the function of the organ both in open- 
ing voluntaries and interludes and in hymn accompani- 
ments and closing voluntaries. 

And speaking of John Zundel, he says : " To make 
music to him means worship and the organ means religion. 
. . . . So long had he been trained, that what words 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRALTS. 6 1 

are to us, notes were to him; and he expressed every 
thought and feeling that he had, upon the instrument. In 
his inspired moments upon the organ, it has brought tears 
to my eyes a hundred times; I have gone in jaded and 
unheartened, and have been caught up by him and lifted 
so that I saw the flash of the gates. I have been com- 
forted, I have been helped, and if I have preached to him 
and helped him, — and I know I have, — he has preached to 
me and helped me; and he knows not and never will know 
how much." 

Mr. Beecher then gives his ideas of the choir and of con- 
gregational singing and of the choice of hymns on the prin- 
ciple of co-operation with the mood of thought or feeling 
into which he wishes to bring his auditors; which show 
the keenest susceptibility to the power of music in himself 
and the quickest sympathy and intuitive knowledge of its 
effect upon a gathering of persons brought together for a 
purpose, and a remarkable capacity for philosophizing 
upon the facts thus gained from experience and observa- 
tion, with a facility for reducing them to a systematic 
practice for subserving his own aims. Nor does he make 
any cast-iron system, but in accordance with what more 
and more appears to have been the plan of his whole life, 
he deduces vital principles which must receive varied ap- 
plication according to '^arying circumstances. 

It was a common remark in those days that, whereas the 
average church congregation was made up in the propor- 
tion of five women to one man, in Plymouth Church the 
proportion ran the other way. Men sought him because 
he was strong and helped them, but women and little 
children no less were attracted by his winning qualities. 
The church flourished; it grew strong; it multiplied rapidly; 
its Sunday-school was thronged; it began mission work in 
the city, and in all practical ways offered prompt evidence 
of the genuine value of the Christian inspiration it received, 
by giving as bountifully as it had received. Strangers 
quickly learned to seek it out; and in its proper work as a 
Christian church, it soon entered upon a vigorous activity. 

Basing his philosophy and his practical methods of 



62 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

attracting men to a higher life rather upon the facts of 
human nature, the teachings of Jesus, and the working 
methods of the Apostles, than upon the skillfully devised 
theological systems of the schools (not because he was 
unfamiliar with the latter, but, because, knowing them so 
well, he thought them less likely to be useful than the 
methods of the earlier day) he naturally gained friends 
faster among the common people who heard him gladly, 
than he did among the professional members of the priest- 
hood and conservators of the traditions of the elders. 

And yet, even among those he found many firm and 
constant friends. The broad foundation on which he 
stood made him broadly liberal toward all beliefs which 
accepted Christ and successfully labored to make men 
Christ-like. Indomitable in the assertion of his own be- 
liefs, he was no less vigorous in maintaining the rights of 
others to theirs. One of his most characteristic sermons 
is entitled "Other Men's 'Consciences." His church re- 
ceived into its communion members from all the Christian 
sects, who found there a common ground on which to 
stand and to work. This commingling of elements gave 
him a body of men and women knit together by the pro- 
foundest sympathy in a simple faith and by an ardent 
love for the man who had released them from the bonds 
of petty sectarianism, and opened to them the larger lib- 
erty of Christian manhood. 

Among the most potent influences which Mr. Beecher 
immediately developed in his new and peculiar church- 
membership, was the social element. The strength of 
associated hearts and wills and minds upon a common 
object, the play of mutual sympathy, the possibility of 
consentaneous purpose, was an element of human nature 
upon which he counted much and with which he accom- 
plished much. With the profoundest belief in the imma- 
nence of God throughout all nature, including the spirit of 
man, — indeed, in the direct influence of the Spirit of God 
upon the souls of men, he was yet a sturdy believer in the 
necessity of bringing about all effects through natural 
causes. 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 6^ 

" The gifts of the Divine Spirit," he says, " are not exceptional, 
or capricious, without rule, without definite purpose ; but they 
are to be just as detinitely expected as the results which the far- 
mer seeks when he sows his seed. ... In regard to the whole 
department of spiritual experiences, I say they are in analogy 
with mental experiences ; not that they are on the same level, but 
that the administration of God over the human soul is in analogy 
with his administration over the lower or physical elements in 
man, and the intermediate emotions of the social and the intel- 
lectual processes. Spiritual developments are, all of them, under 
law, administered by law, as much as any other part of nature, 
and to be studied therefore as we study every other part of human 
life. And in regard to the moral elements, all the graces of the 
Spirit, and all the fruits of the Spirit are to be developed by edu- 
cation just as much as any other part of the mind. . . . That 
we perfect man's physical and intellectual nature by education, 
every one knows. . . . but when we come to religion, men fiy 
the track. They seem to think, 'Here is vagueness; here is a 
realm too sacred to suppose that law operates in it.' And it is 
just there that I say, in respect emphatically to revivals of re- 
ligion, that they are conformable to law, and that that conform- 
ableness to law lies in the foundation of knowledge and educa- 
tion, in the production of emotion, and in the production and 
conduct of all spiritual processes. . . . It is such statements 
that many feel to be an upheaval of the foundations and a de- 
parture from the faith of the fathers. ' Does not such a view as 
this confound Nature and Grace ? Is it not bringing all gracious 
operations down to the level of nature ? ' What is nature, then ? 
. . . Everything that God ever organized into being or main- 
tained is nature. . . . Wherever, along the lines of space, the 
word of God has thrilled and something has happened, there is nat- 
ure ; and nothing is or can be, that does not circle into that. To 
reduce things ' to the level of nature,' then, is to reduce them to the 
level of God, — which ought not to be a very great degradation !" 

In this very same lecture, in vv^hich Mr. Beecher w^as in- 
sisting upon the necessity of using proper means for the 
bringing about of spiritual, as well as physical, intellect- 
ual, and moral effects, he was asked by one of the stu- 
dents: — 

" Would it not be consistent with your view to hold that 
prayer is more essential to the production of a revival than it is 
essential to the product of effects in farming ? " 



64 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

Answer: — 

" Certainly. That is to say, prayer is more nearly related to 
the result you want to produce. Guano is better for farming 
than prayer, but prayer is the guano of spiritual life. Pray 
always. The praying always means that the thought, the feeling, 
the taste, the sense of pleasure, the social gladness, all the while 
effervesce, so that they take the upward tendency, they report 
themselves continually through the higher feelings towards God ; 
and that I suppose to be prayer, — communion, God with us." 

With these rather uncommonly sensible views, which on 
the one hand may be called scientific, but which on the 
other hand were inspired by the profoundest trust in God's 
fatherly interest, and in the uniformity of the operations 
of the Divine Power so that its laws are discoverable, Mr. 
Beecher made much of the prayer-meetings. 

The sense of God's fatherhood and of the naturalness of 
approach to him, was most characteristic of his entire life 
and work. 

And this same atmosphere of the naturalness of tlie spirit- 
ual life permeated and enveloped his every activity in 
private and in public. It was what made his prayer- 
meetings unique in all Christendom. The simple, hearty, 
effective singing of the throng of seven or eight hundred 
people, led compactly and yet sympathetically by a piano 
played with a clear, firm touch; the informal, cordial, 
friendly, joyous way in which he taught his people to come 
into these meetings — at once the cause and the effect of 
the sense of fellowship; the singularly intelligible, natural, 
effective way in which Mr. Beecher always read the Bible — 
utterly avoiding the professional "holy tone" but develop- 
ing the spirit and meaning of the passage (whether simply 
narrative, or dramatic, or devotional, or instructive, or 
hortative) precisely as he would have done a passage from 
any other book, led people into an interest before they 
knew it. Then, the frank, familiar style in which he would 
state the generic truth to be found in the Scriptural pas- 
sage, — sitting meanwhile pleasantly in his chair, as rather 
in social converse than in formal discourse, — bringing the 
generic into the specific and multitudinous with ready 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 65 

illustration; the way in which he developed the gifts of 
the different members by calling them out on some per- 
sonal point of explanation, or making rapid and familiar 
interplay of question and answer; the patience and tact he 
showed with the inevitable bores; the variety he managed 
to infuse from week to week, — all these things made his 
prayer-meeting a power in the church itself, and a con- 
stant attraction to outsiders. 

In getting at the influences brought to bear upon Ply- 
mouth Church, which made it what it was, it is necessary 
to mention the frequent revivals of religion which took 
place during the early years. Mr. Beecher's philosophy of 
these occasional impulses, as already stated, was that they 
were dependent upon regular laws, and yet that there are 
favoring circumstances which determine times and seasons. 
All methods are not alike wise, neither are all seasons alike 
propitious. 

"Among hundreds of revivals," he says, " I have known only 
one that occurred in the midst of harvest ; because men cannot 
spare the time from the harvest field. . , . Business has 
much to do with times and seasons. For instance, sometimes 
men are hot with speculation, and the whole air is full of it. 
That is not a favorable time for any processes leading toward this 
production of common moral feeling. ... As you adapt all 
the economies of industry to the varying seasons, so you are to 
adapt your moral culture of men to those peculiarities of God's 
providence, which, with a little care and observation, every one 
may discern. . . . It is not every man that plows well and 
sows well, who gets his harvest; but still, that is the average 
course of things, and the probability is such as to encourage 
everybody." 

And again: — 

" We have occasion to bless God for these outpourings of the 
Spirit, that come as the wind comes, we know not always whence, 
and that go as the wind goes, we know not always whither, but 
which, like the wind in the mariner's sail, may be so studied and 
so used that there shall be over it a substantial control." 

Mr. Beecher entered with zeal upon all these modes of 
fertilizing his church, of calling into action its latent forces, 
and of utilizing the forces so developed not only for the 



66 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

purpose of enlarging the numerical strength of the new 
organization, but also of making it active in work, of mak- 
ing it felt as a force for good in the community at large. 
His wisely directed power was astonishingly successful in 
effects. 

Between 1S47 and 1856 was a period when men's minds 
were seething and fermenting. The excitement ran largely 
along the lines of temperance agitation, and the growth of 
the anti-slavery sentiment as a moral political force. 

None felt more profoundly than he the working of that 
reform-leaven. He knew intuitively that he was set at a 
focal point. Finding himself in the midst of the intensest 
commercial activities of the country, being essentially a 
part of New York, although not within its civic boundaries; 
seeing that the throngs who came week after week to his Sun- 
day preachings, and Wednesday evening lectures, and Fri- 
day evening prayer-meetings, Avere very largely composed 
of active business men, a great proportion of whom were 
between twenty-five and forty years of age, and recognizing 
that as his church grew and consolidated it was made up 
of much of this same element, he seems to have laid out 
for himself then the general course that he consistently 
pursued to the end. Not that he was gifted with preter- 
natural foresight of what the years were to bring forth, 
but that he had the sensitive temperament which brings 
subtle knowledge of atmospheric disturbance. And in this 
case it was a disturbance which aroused his whole nature 
to preparations for the coming storm. In every aspect of 
the reform questions of the day, which on all sides were 
dividing men's sympathies and opinions, splitting organ- 
izations, overturning established forms, he saw not so much 
the superficial effects, as the underlying causes. To him, 
political parties, Bible and Tract Societies, Missionary 
Boards, Christian sects and churches, were always means 
and not ends. Just as he turned away in disgust from 
theological quarrels which in the name of God and things 
holy he had frequently seen to degenerate into the most 
scandalous personal enmities, so too, he looked at all the 
organized instrumentalities of moral and religious instruc- 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 67 

tion among men, valuing them not for what they were called, 
but for what they could do, and turned away from them as 
valueless when they became the subjects of violent contro- 
versy and bitter dissension instead of being instruments 
for good. He judged men and institutions according to 
that simple but searching test glVen by Jesus, "By their 
fruits ye shall know them." 

"When they said to me, 'You are not orthodox,' I replied, 
'Very well, be it so; I am out on other business: I understand 
that call that has been sounding down through two thousand 
years, and I will obey it: Follow me and I will make you fishers 
of men.' 

"What about 'original sin'.^ There has been so much actual 
transgression that I have not had time to go back on to that." 

It was thus his practical manner of applying broad gen- 
eric principles to every present condition of human life 
that made his genius effective. 

And the first thing that he did to prepare for the great 
conrtict that had already begun and that was more and 
more extending itself amid the various organizations of 
the country, was to collect and to inspire with enthusiasm 
for the fatherly God and the brotherly Saviour and the 
needy human brotherhood, a body of men and women 
who became a great center of power along those essential 
practical lines. And as in regard to all other organiza- 
tions, so in regard to Plymouth Church: while it was the 
thing he loved best, yet it was always with him but a 
means to the one great aim of his life. He did ^ot set 
himself to the purpose of making a "prominent church," 
but, recognizing the great opportunity for effective work, 
he leaped eagerly into the field and gathered his forces 
together. 

There can be little doubt that his main and indeed only 
thought in all his wise and earnest labors in Plymouth 
Church in those early days, was his strong desire to "catch 
men," yet every fiber of his being was a-tingle with the 
electric conditions of the time. He says: — * 

*Address before the London Congregational Board, Sept. 28, 1886; from 
"A Summer in England with H. W. Beecher " (1887). 



68 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

" I came insensibly into connection with public questions ; I was 
sucked into the political controversies and the moral reformations 
of the age; and, just at that time, that question was coming up 
which involved every principle of rectitude, of morality, of hu- 
manity, and of religion. My father was too old; the controversy 
came on when he was failing; he was cautious in his way; he was 
afraid that his son Henry would get himself into difficulties. But 
I took no counsel with man. When I came to Brooklyn, some 
dear men who are now at rest said, with the best intention, ' You 
have a blessed chance, and you can come to very good influence 
if you do not throw yourself away;' and then warned me not to 
preach on slavery and on some other topics which at that time 
were up in the public mind. I do not know what it is in me — 
whether it is my father or my mother or both of them — but the 
moment you tell me that a thing that should be done is unpop- 
ular, I am right there, every time. I fed on the privilege of mak- 
ing men hear things, because I was a public speaker. I glorified 
in my gifts, not because they brought praise, for they brought the 
other thing continually; but men would come, and would hear, 
and I rejoiced in it. . . . Jesus knows that for his sake I 
smote with the sword and with the spear, not because I loved 
controversy, but because I loved truth and humanity; and be- 
cause I saw weak men flinch, and because I saw base men truckle 
and bargain, and because I saw that the cause of Christ was likely 
to suffer: and I will fight to the end." 

It udll not be expected that this sketch can enter upon 
the details of Mr. Beecher's active life. His teachings were 
vital, and as he laid more stress upon the Christian art of 
right living than the theologic science of right dying, they 
penetrated with power into many a circle, and aroused 
torpidity to life. The elderly were startled and shocked; 
the young were electrified and stimulated; the mercantile 
community were stirred with both interest and anger at 
his bold expositions of commercial temptation and dis- 
honest practice; respectable politicians were angered to 
find themselves openly coupled with those whom they 
despised but with whom they were yoked in practical 
politics. 

Gifted with all his father's quick insight and genial 
humor and forceful aptitude in exposition, but freed from 
the theological partisanship which had been at once the 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 69 

Strength and the limitation of the elder man's career, Mr. 
Beecher had a fresh and original way of putting things, 
even when the underlying thought was a familiar one, 
which instantly arrested the attention of hearers or readers; 
for he very soon began to write as well as to speak to the 
public. It is not at all improbable that his singular lack 
of verbal memory, making it impossible down to the end 
of his life for him to quote anything except the briefest 
and most familiar passages of the Bible (and hardly those 
with accuracy) made many of his statements seem ques- 
tionable simply because they were not arrayed in the 
phraseology to which the orthodox religious minds were 
accustomed. Looking at matters from the natural and 
reasonable, rather than from the ecclesiastical and theolog- 
ical side, he constantly availed himself of such truth as he 
thought he found in the old doctrines without putting 
them into the old language, and many earnest and excellent 
men and women who were drawn into his church and felt 
the stimulating power of his preaching, were yet in their 
hearts troubled, because they missed the old familiar and 
hackneyed phrases. 

One of his earliest Brooklyn friends one day asked him: 
"Mr. Beecher, ^(? you believe in the divinity of Christ?" 
With surprise he answered, "I know no other God." "Do 
you believe in the influence of the Holy Spirit?" "I be- 
lieve," said he, "in the direct impact of God upon the 
human heart. Is it possible that you do not yet know a 
doctrine without its old-fashioned label tied to it?" 

Such misunderstandings in his very flock make it less to 
be wondered at that his fellow-clergymen, who were soaked 
and steeped in theologic terms, often failed to catch the 
inner meaning of his talk because they missed the ancient 
shibboleth. Moreover, it was not long before those keen- 
sighted purveyors for the public taste and need — the 
journalists — lit upon the fact that the people were inter- 
ested in Beecher, and they began to report him in the daily 
press. His own statement of the general result of this, as 
made in his address before the New York and Brooklyn 
Association of ministers and churches, in October, 1884, 



yo HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

while based upon the experience of many years, is yet an 
apt putting of the case as it was from the first: — 

"You must bear in mind that great as is their usefulness — and 
I bear willing testimony to the great usefulness of the ubiquitous 
body of reporters — they are not all apostolic in theology, they are 
not Platos in philosophy, they are not all the most eminent dis- 
ciples of the school of metaphysics, and they are set to do that 
which not one man of genius even in ten thousand can do — the 
rarest thing in the world — to put a discourse of one whole hour 
into a reading-space of five minutes. To do that is one of the 
supremest works of intellectual genius. But they are sent to the 
churches as well as to other meetings, and are expected to make 
a report that folks will read ; so they catch here and they catch 
there shining passages, grotesque ones, or some that raise a little 
laughter. They go over to the office and the night editor says: 
' I want a quarter of a column of Beecher.' ' Well, but I have got 
a whole column.' 'Cut it down, cut it down.' And they cut it 
here and they cut it there, and keep in things that they think will 
attract attention, — and that is the report of my ser.mon ! Well, I 
do not blame them ; but I tell you what I do blame. I blame the 
want of honor in ministers and editors who live within an hour's 
walk or an hour's postage of my house, and who could write to 
me and say, ' I see in the papers this morning such and such 
things are reported as having been said by you. I wish to know 
whether that is a correct representation of your views.' Not they ! 
They sit down and write a long critique and send it to the Con- 
gregationalist or the Advance or somewhere else, based on my 
'views.' If it is worth my while, and I turn around and sa3^ ' I 
was misrepresented; I didn't say so;' they will cry, 'Oh, he is 
backing down as usual!' So then, for more than twenty-five 
years, there is not a man on the globe that has been reported so 
much as I have been — in my private meetings, in my street con- 
versations, on the platforms of public meetings, and steadily in 
the pulpit; a great many times admirably, many times less ad- 
mirably, and sometimes abominably. This has been going on 
week after week, and year after year. Do you suppose I could 
follow up all misstatements and rectify them? ... A man 
might run around like a kitten after its tail, all his life, if he were 
going around explaining all reports of his expressions and all the 
things he had written. Let them go. They will correct them- 
selves. The average and general influence of a man's teaching 
will be more mighty than any single misconception, or misappre- 
hension through misconception." 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 71 

Thus it was that while he was constantly misappre- 
hended, both in speech, in sentiment, and in general effect, 
by means of these fragmentary reportings of tongue and 
pen, nevertheless his influence constantly enlarged among 
those who had the opportunity or the sense to apprehend 
his meaning and follow the general trend of his teaching. 

Many attempted analyses of Mr. Beecher's powers as 
orator and preacher have been made. Perhaps the best 
was that made by Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs in his Ad- 
dress at the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration (" Silver 
Wedding") of Plymouth Church, in 1872. The following 
selected passages (italics being ours) give somewhat of 
his ideas: — 

" The sources of that power in him, in which, during the last 
twenty-five years, you have been all the while rejoicing, are very 
deep and manifold. It used to amuse and provoke me, years ago, 
when men would speak as if his strength lay in some one thing; 
in his voice, perhaps, or in his gesture, or his power of illustra- 
tion, or something else. Some single element, it was now and 
then thought, was the hair of this Samson, in which his strength 
resided; and if he were shorn of that he would become like other 
men. Nonsense! You know, as well as I do, that his power 
comes from many sources. It is like a rushing, royal river, which 
has its birthplace in a thousand springs. It is like a magnificent 
oak, which has its grand uplift of trunk and stem, and its vast 
sweep of branches, by reason of the multitudinous roots which 
strike down deep, and spread through the soil in every direction. 
These supply the mighty timbers of the battle-ship and the build- 
ing! 

" Now, if I were to go, as I shall not, into a thorough analysis 
of his power as a preacher, I should occupy your time for a great 
while; but there are certain elements of that power which are 
familiar to you, and which redound, not to his praise or yours, 
but to the praise of Him who made him what he is, and sent 
him thither. 

" First among these elements, I should put a thoroughly vital- 
ized mind ; a mind so vitalized that its very process becomes as 
vital as himself ; so that there is no reproduction of past proc- 
esses; no memorizing of what has previously been in the mind. 
His creative faculties are in play all the time. . . . 

" I think I should put SQCond, i/n/ne/ise common sense ; a won- 
derfully self-rectifying judgment, which gives sobriety and sound- 



72 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

ness to all his main processes of thought. I don't know but I 
have been more impressed by that in Mr. Beecher than by any 
other one element of strength in him. A man who has not com- 
mon sense, this sound, self-rectifying judgment, on which the 
machinery of his mind is to work, flashes out very soon. . . . 

" I should put next to this, I think, his quick and deep sympa- 
thy with men ; his wonderful intuitive perception of moods of 
mind, which makes these stand out before him like a procession 
passing in the street. You say, 'This is genius.' Of course it is; 
but it is the genius, you observe, not of the dramatist nor of the 
poet; it is the genius of the great Preacher, who catches his sug- 
gestion, his inspirations even, from the eyes or the faces, shining 
or tearful, of the people before him. 

" Then, still further, comes that mental sensibility, that emo- 
tional responsiveness, which has made him apt and ready for 
every occasion, that responsiveness which is called for in every 
minister, but which has been called upon in him more than any 
other man, perhaps, in the whole American pulpit, during the 
last twenty-five years. He has never been found wanting in read- 
iness for the occasion, no matter what the subject may have been, 
or what the scene. His mind has been full of vigor, and has 
kindled spontaneously, by collision with persons, or with themes, 
or with circumstances, whenever the occasion has been pre- 
sented. 

"This intimate and immediate responsiveness to, and sympathy 
with, subjects and occasions, is an immense gift — charming not 
only, but always fertilizing, and alwa3^s refreshing. 

" Then put beyond that (for certainly it properly goes beyond 
and farther off) his wonderful ani)nal vigor, his fullness of bodily 
power; his voice, which can thunder and whisper alike; his sym- 
pathy with Nature, which is so intimate and confidential that she 
tells him all her secrets, and supplies him with continual images ; 
and, above all, put as the crown upon the whole that enthusiasm 
for Christ to which he has himself referred this evening, and 
which has certainly been the animating power in his ministry — 
the impression upon his soul that he, having seen the glory of 
the Son of God, has been set here to reflect that glory upon 
others; to inspire their minds with it; to touch their hearts with 
it; to kindle their souls with it, and so to prepare them for the 
heavenly realm — put all these together, and you have some of the 
elements of power in this great Preacher— not all of them, but 
some, snatched hurriedly from the great treasure-house. There 
you have a few, at any rate, of the traits and forces of him whose 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 73 

power has chained you, and quickened and blessed you, during 
all these years." 

The abounding physical vigor of the man, his sunny 
good nature, the loving spirit with which he regarded his 
God and every work of his Father's hands down through 
all sorts and conditions of men, and animals, and plants, 
to the face of inanimate nature; his quick sense of humor, 
of the incongruities not only, but of the aptitudes of life; 
and the fresh impulse by which his mouth uttered the 
abundance of the heart, all these elements were a part of 
his power; but also offered one of the most frequent objec- 
tions made to him. Very frequently the ripple of a laugh 
would run over the face of the congregation, and when 
after the service the new-come listener, shocked to find 
that he had laughed in church, stopped to analyze the 
matter, he found that it was not mere fun or a joke at 
which he had laughed, but that he had been startled by 
some unlooked-for, unaccustomed simile, and that it was 
quite as much the novelty of the idea and the surprising 
deftness of the illustration which had provoked his risibles 
as any sense of jocosity. Still, while this was the frequent 
case, there was indeed no lack of humor in itself — though 
never for itself, in public ministrations. He says: — 

" To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, to have Christ so melted 
and dissolved in you that when you preach yourself you preach 
Him, as Paul did, to have every part of you living and luminous 
with Christ, and thus to make use of everything that is in you, 
your analogical reasoning, your logical reasoning, your imagina- 
tion, your mirthfulness, your humor, your indignation, your wrath, 
to take everything that is in you, all steeped in Jesus Christ, and 
to throw yourself with all your power upon the congregation — 
that has been my theory of preaching the gospel. A good many 
folks have laughed at the idea of my being a fit preacher because 
I laughed, and because I made somebody else laugh. I never 
went out of my way to do it in my life; but, if some sudden turn 
of a sentence, like the crack of a whip, sets men off, I do not think 
worse of it for that — not a bit ! I have felt that man should con- 
secrate every gift that he has got in him that has any relation to 
the persuasion of men and to the melting of men — that he should 
put them all on the altar, kindle them all, and let them burn for 
Christ's sake." 



74 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

There is another point in this regard that may as well 
be mentioned here. That is, that his humorous passages, 
although perfectly natural and frequently unconscious, 
were quite as often the result of intuition and intention. 
In his " Yale Lectures," in answer to the question of one 
of the students as to whether it was a proper thing to make 
an audience laugli by an illustration, he replied: — 

" Never turn aside from a laugh any more than you would from 
a cry. Go ahead on your Master's business and do it well. And 
remember this, that every faculty in you was placed there by the 
dear Lord for his service's sake. Never try to raise a laugh for 
the laugh's sake, or to make men merry as a piece of sensation- 
alism, when you are preaching on solemn things; that is allow- 
able on a picnic, but not in the pulpit, where you are preaching 
of God and of man's destiny. But if a laugh comes up naturally 
do not stifle it. Strike that chord; and particularly if yow want 
to make an audience weep. If I can make them laugh, I do not 
thank anybody for the next move; I will make them cry. Did 
you ever see a woman carrying a pan of milk quite full, and it 
slops over on one side, that it did not immediately slop over on 
the other also ? 

"If you quote stale jokes; if you make queer turns because 
they will make people laugh, and to show that you have power 
over the congregation, you will prove yourselves contemptible 
fellows. But if, when you are arguing any question, the thing 
comes upon you so that you see a point in a ludicrous light, 3^ou 
can sometimes flash it at your audience, and accomplish at a 
stroke what you are seeking to do by a long turn of argument; 
and that is entirely allowable. In such a case do not attempt to 
suppress laughter; it is a part of the nature God gave us, and 
which we can use in his service. When you are fighting the 
devil, shoot him with anything." 

True to his instinct of keeping his sympathies alive to- 
ward the people and entering into the life-conditions of 
men whom he was trying to influence, he habituated him- 
self to study men and seek them out. Saturday especially 
he always made a play-day in preparation for Sunday. A 
day of genial, pleasurable, social exhilaration, a day of 
seeing agreeable things, of looking at pictures, of standing 
on the street and watching the people and teams go by (he 
was very fond of horses), of crossing the ferry and going 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 75 

up into the pilot-house, where he was on friendly and famil- 
iar terms with all the pilots, of going along the docks and 
on to the ships, into ship-yards, into foundries and loco- 
motive works. He liked to go to Tiffany's, where he would 
ask, ' What are the men doing to-day ? ' And so, with some 
member of the house he would go down to the ateliers and 
watch the workmen silver-plating and engraving, and learn 
to understand what they were doing, and why, and not 
only that, but to get a sympathetic insight into their feel- 
ings and ideas. Thus he constantly fed his heart with the 
sympathies of humanity, refreshed his blood and nerves 
and brain, and stored his mind with a great amount of 
curious and interesting knowledge, which reappeared in 
figures and illustrations and apt arguments. 

In regard to his gathering of knowledge, which he was 
diligently doing by incessant study of books and men, he 
never did it in the formal and methodical way of having 
each subject done up by itself, labeled and docketed and 
filed away in its own pigeon-hole, but his broad mind re- 
ceived facts and ideas much as the soil receives the seed, 
and showers, and sunshine. They disappeared and became 
a part of himself, to reappear in newer forms of vital 
strength and beauty. 

He was, and to the end of his life continued to be, a 
great reader. He made close study of the constitutional 
history of the United States, and was diligent in mastering 
the ideas of great rulers. He found when he came to the 
East great stores of intellectual and artistic wealth, which 
opened to him new worlds. His pecuniary means were 
already enlarged. He received at first fifteen hundred 
dollars per annum, which was a large advance upon the 
four hundred, and six hundred, of his Western pastorates, 
and which, as the Plymouth society grew in wealth and 
strength, was properly enlarged from time to time. He 
made it a point to follow up in literature, as well as in 
practical research, every topic that especially interested 
him. Sometimes it was the general history of art, or the 
special development of architecture, of painting, of sculpt- 
ure, of engraving, of etching; and his library showed illus- 



76 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

trations of all those splendid lines of thought and achieve- 
ment: and it was not upon his book-shelves and walls alone 
but in himself that could be found unusual stores of knowl- 
edge. Music and organ-building; soap and cosmetics; 
pottery and porcelains; large additions to his already ex- 
tensive knowledge of flowers, trees, and methods of culti- 
vation; general literature, history, theology, metaphysics, 
natural science, and especially the whole line of philosophic 
literature which tends towards the co-ordination of these 
great departments; physiology, anatomy, and medicine, — ■ 
and in short a large array of books upon topics of interest 
to all humanity, and therefore not foreign to him, bore wit- 
ness to the incessant labor with which he stored his grow^- 
ing mind. 

These things of course began by slow degrees and en- 
larged and accumulated more and more rapidly as the 
years increased his pecuniary means and his power of 
assimilating the mental stores thus gathered. But the 
point here is to show his method, and to emphasize the 
idea which he has in many places laid stress upon, that 
genius is but the power of combustion, and needs fuel if it 
is to produce light and heat. 

There is always a temptation, in considering events 
which have successively issued along a course of years, 
to read the beginnings in the light of later developments. 
From one point of view this is of course natural and nec- 
essary, for we can better understand the bearings of early 
matters when we have their consequences before us. For 
our present purpose, however, we do not need to impute 
undue wisdom to the mind of this young reformer, in 
the idea that he foresaw all the wonderful crisis of his 
first twenty-five years in Plymouth Church, but it is essen- 
tial, as we believe, to a comprehension of his modes of 
action and the resulting influence which he exerted, that 
we insist from the first upon his disinterested, loyal, 
ardent devotion to God as a poiver manifest in unselfish love 
rather than in autocratic force; and the consistent applica- 
tion of that belief as a guiding principle in all the affairs 
of life. Out of this grew his intense devotion to the inter- 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH: PERSONAL TRAITS. 77 

ests of man as God's child; his insistence upon the constant 
need of the elevating influences of unselfishness as personi- 
fied in Christ and the constant importance of infusing this 
spirit into human institutions of every character, — the fam- 
ily, the church, society,the city, the state, — all the outgrowths 
of man's organic social tendency. If his life be followed by 
the indications of this cardinal principle, it will be seen to 
have been nobly persistent and earnestly steady. All 
those variations which men have been accustomed to call 
"inconsistency," "errors of judgment," "the great mis- 
take of his life " (of which he committed a great many, 
each one being "the greatest" according to the point of 
view of the specific interests — personal, ecclesiastical, or 
political — which he at the time opposed) will be seen to 
have been impulses along the general line which he had 
laid down for himself from the first, and by the inspira- 
tion of which he builded the foundations and the super- 
structure of Plymouth Church, that strong fortress of 
human hearts, in which he abode and from which his 
power went forth during forty years. 



78 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



V. 

POLITICAL CAREER. 

The portion of Mr. Beecher's work covered by this vol- 
ume grew directly out of his nature, training, convictions, 
and the enlargement of his powers as set forth in the fore- 
going chapters. It includes many of his appeals to the 
public intelligence and conscience with reference to slavery, 
freedom, war, and the general development of civil liberty 
in the United States. The simplest way of getting at the 
relations and the influence of these appeals will be to 
make a brief running account of the public affairs of the 
time, noting especially the points accented by the addresses 
selected for reprinting. 

The time covered by these addresses has been divided 
into three periods: I. Freedom and Slavery, 1847-1861; 
IL Civil War, 1861-1S65; III. Civil Liberty, 1865-1885;— 
thirty-eight years in all. 

The pivot upon which the history of the L'^nited States 
turned during the entire fifty years of Mr. Beecher's public 
work, was unquestionably American Slavery, with its con- 
sequences. While his relations to it were the most notice- 
able feature of his own life, the subject itself is of course 
too large to be entered upon here except roughly; but the 
facts that in it was the storm-center of all those tumultu- 
ous times, and that — while thousands of other patriotic 
and sensible Christian men, as well as pious Christian 
ministers, were not able to see the dangers of it — this man's 
love for the Father-God, and his esteem and sympathy 
for his brother-man, were outraged by the existence and 
still more by the attempted extension of that great evil, 
give the key-note which must be accepted in order to re- 
solve his whole life into harmony. 

He conceived it to be his duty, not only, but his neces- 



POLITICAL CAREER. 79 

sity, to think, to speak, to instruct in all the higher views of 
their daily duty the people who were following him; their 
duty not only towards God but also towards their fellow- 
men, — whether in the family, or more broadly in society, 
or in the close interplay of commercial activities, or in 
the still higher organic relations of the city and of the 
state and of the country at large. And thus it was that, 
whatever line of private or public duty made demands 
upon individuals, the moral and spiritual side of it found 
Henry Ward Beecher promptly at work, endeavoring to 
throw light upon the practical path of right doing. 

In a sermon entitled " The Sphere of the Christian 
Minister" (January 24, 1869) occurs the following pas- 
sage: — 

" There is a popular impression — and it seems to men like a 
philosophical truism — that every man understands his own busi- 
ness best ; that he need not be meddled with, at least till he asks 
advice ; and that even then no one can counsel him so wisely as 
one of the same craft. Complaint is often made on that ground, 
of ministers, that they meddle with things that they do not un- 
derstand. I think they do, too, when they preach theology.' 
There is an amazing deal of ' wisdom ' that will be called ' rubbish ' 
one of these days. But when ministers meddle with practical 
life, with ethical questions and relations, they are meddling with 
just what they do understand, — or ought to. If they do not under- 
stand these things, they have failed to prepare themselves for one 
of the most important functions to which they could address 
themselves, as ministers. . . . 

" There is nothing, however, more untrue than that every man 
understands his own business best, if by that you mean that he 
understands it in its largest relations — in its results upon the 
general welfare ; and more particularly if you mean that he under- 
stands his owm business best in its moral influence upon himself, 
upon his fellows, and upon society. Usually, none understand 
the moral bearing of a business so little as the men who are em- 
barked in it. . . . The baker knows more about kneading 
dough, about the time it should require to rise, and about how 
long it should be in baking; but when it is done, and I take the 
loaf and eat it, then I am as good a judge of bread as he is. And 
so it is with various kinds of business. They bring out results 
here and there, and the community is made to take the benefit 
or damage, as the case may be. And moral teachers who stand 



8o HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

and look on — who have discrimination, large reflection, clear in- 
tuition, and who, above all, judge from a moral stand-point— 
such men are competent to be critics of everything that there is 
in human society. . . . The moment a man so conducts his 
profession that it touches the question of right and wrong, he 
comes into my sphere. There I stand ; and I put God's measure, 
the golden reed of the sanctuary, on him and his course; and I 
am his master, if I be a true seer and a true moral teacher; and I 
am not meddling. He has brought his business up to me the 
moment when it comes into the sphere of right and wrong. . . 

"A man may preach politics too much. A man may do it fool- 
ishly. So a man may administer a bank foolishly, manufacture 
foolishly, or carry on any other business foolishly; but that is no 
reason why a bank should not be established, why a man may 
not engage in manufacturing, or why business of any sort should 
not be carried on. A minister may not be discreet in preaching 
upon secular topics, but that is no reason why they should not 
be preached upon. There have been indiscreet ministers from 
the days of the apostles, and it would be strange if in the future 
there should not be found here and there one that is not discreet. 
But the duty of introducing such topics is now generally ac- 
knowledged. I think that question is settled, for your life and 
mine at least." 

So it is; and it was settled very largely by the courage 
and persistence, the intense moral earnestness, and the 
large conservative wisdom of Henry Ward Beecher. Who- 
ever will read the contents of this volume — which offers 
examples of his newspaper writing, discourses in Plymouth 
pulpit, political speeches pure and simple, and popular ad- 
dresses on themes of general interest — will be struck, 
from the point of view of the present time, with the 
breadth and steadiness of his position in the earlier days 
of excitement. His arguments are based on the law and 
the constitution of the land as well as those of humanity, 
and it is surprising to note his steadfast course, not only 
amid the turmoil about him but also under the pressure 
of his own interior impulsive forces. The strength of his 
position and the wholesomeness of his advice — tempora- 
rily enforced by his eloquence but generally justified by 
events — went far to make his theory of the clergyman's 
business practicable. 



POLiriCAL CAREER. 8 1 

Division I. — Freedom and Slavery. 

Just at the time when young Beecher came to Brook- 
lyn (the autumn of 1847) the question of slavery had 
again arisen for discussion in Congress and throughout 
the country. The Mexican war, following on the heels of 
the annexation of Texas in the interests of the extension 
of slavery into new and unexhausted territory, had just 
closed, although peace was not formally declared until 
July 4, 1848. Florida, Iowa, and Wisconsin were shortly 
afterward admitted as States; Texas also; gold was dis- 
covered in California; and the admission of California 
as a State was complicated with the attempted extension 
of slavery into that territory as well as into Utah and New 
Mexico. The " Free-soil Party " was organized among the 
people in 1848, under the lead of ex-President Martin 
Van Buren; the "Wilmot Proviso" in Congress, excluding 
slavery from the new territories, was opposed by Mr. Cal- 
houn's resolution limiting the right of Congress to inter- 
fere; agitation grew hotter and hotter. Webster and Cal- 
houn in the Senate only typified the growing excitement 
throughout the country; for the seeds planted years before 
by Giddings and Garrison and other heroes of conscience, 
and wet with the tears and bloody sweat of social martyr- 
dom, were slowly bearing their fruit, and from year to year 
extending their harvests in the Northern soil. But the time 
of triumph was a weary way off, — not yet to be descried 
even by the eye of faith; nay, the fight seems to have been 
carried on almost without hope, sustained only by a sturdy 
love for God and mankind. 

The late Senator H. S. Foote of Mississippi, in his "War 
of the Rebellion, or Scylla and Charybdis,"* undertakes 
to show that the " irrepressible conflict " between freedom 
and slavery " could not have arisen but for the most un- 
skillful and blundering management of the men in power — 
the incessant agitation of sectional factionists, both in the 
North and in the South, and the unwise disregard of that 
august spirit of conciliation and compromise in which our 



* New York : Harper & Brothers, 1866. 



82 HEXRY WARD BEECHER. 

complex frame of government is known to have had its 
origin." But he miscalculates what were the necessities 
of slavery for more territory to grow in, and ignores the 
deep hold which the spirit of freedom, in spite of political 
and commercial interests, had upon the Northern people. 
Far clearer-eyed were the anti-slavery men of the North, 
on the one hand, and on the other men like Senator John 
C. Calhoun of South Carolina, who was doubtless what Mr. 
Foote describes him — " one of the most intellectual and 
pure-minded men that have ever lived," and who held 
the view that the free States and the slave States could not 
continue to live together harmoniously, but the latter 
would soon find it necessary to resort to separation. 

"Early in the eventful year of 1850," says Mr. Foote, " he 
[Calhoun] avowed to me . . . his own painful and firmly 
riveted conviction on this subject, and declared, in language of 
extraordinary emphasis, that he regarded a peaceful withdrawal 
from the Union as altogether practicable, provided its execution 
should be attempted under the lead of Maryland and Virginia ; 
making known at the same time that he had already drawn out 
a Constitution for the new republic which he contemplated, in 
which the slave-holding principle had been given a predominant 
influence." 

When, in 1850, after much heated discussion both in 
Congress and throughout the country, Henry Clay, the 
author of the Missouri Compromise of 182 1, proposed to 
consolidate all past compromises involving slavery, — 
covering the disputed subjects of Texas boundary, Utah 
and New Mexico territories, California, partial abolition 
of slavery in the District of Columbia, rendition of fugi- 
tive slaves, and other matters — into one " Omnibus bill " of 
thirty-nine sections, the excitement grew more intense than 
ever. The essential element of the bill was the yielding 
on the part of the South of the admission of California as 
a free State, and on the part of the North the fugitive 
slave clause, which not only allowed Southerners to re- 
claim escaping slaves but made it the duty of Northern- 
ers to help them. 

In 1849 the Congregationalists had established in New 




^^..^^^:^^^ 



POLITICAL CAREER. §3 

York the weekly religious paper called The Independent, 
having as its editors, Dr. Leonard Bacon, Dr. Richard S. 
Storrs, Jr., and Dr. Joseph P. Thompson. To this paper 
Mr. Beecher was asked to contribute; and, as the growing 
conflict between slavery and freedom was at that time the 
motive of pretty much all political and much social and 
commercial activity, it was inevitable that that should be 
the line of discussion most attractive to him. His utter- 
ances were so bold and ringing that the editors, highly as 
they appreciated the value of his contributions, both as 
moral forces and as journalistic attractions, did not care to 
be held responsible for them, and so it came about that his 
articles were usually signed with a star, or large asterisk. 

Many an article on all sorts and conditions of subjects 
went into these " Star Papers," and made its mark upon 
the sentiment and opinions of the times ; but the paper 
which, it may be almost said, made Henry Ward Beecher a 
national rather than a local force was the one which stands 
first in the "Addresses" reprinted in this volume, in the 
division entitled " Freedom and Slavery," an article sin- 
gling out from Mr. Clay's " Omnibus bill" its vital points, 
and asking the question, " Shall We Compromise ?" 

The Congressional agitation had been going on for 
months. The North was profoundly stirred by the con- 
test, discussing all the ins and outs of the complicated 
legislative proposal. The Independent had several strong 
articles on the situation, but when on February 21, 1850, 
this article appeared, disregarding the artificial complica- 
tions and setting forth in all plainness the issue — " Slavery 
is right ; slavery is wrong. Slavery shall live ; slavery 
shall die. Slavery shall extend; slavery shall not extend" 
— it struck the key-note towards which succeeding events 
toned up the North until Fort Sumter brought the great 
outburst, and the war, begun by the South, killed slavery 
and gave the South new life. The article was copied 
everywhere, and cleared the atmosphere. The eyes of 
many were opened. It penetrated to the South and ar- 
rested the earnest attention of the dying Calhoun. Mr. 
Beecher's position was that slavery must extend — or die; 



84 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

that it was both constitutional and morally right for the 
North to refuse to consent to its extension, while it was 
a base betrayal of the right to yield extension for the sake 
of a temporary and fallacious peace. 

But the conscience of the people grows slowly; and that 
of their " representative " politicians and statesmen slower 
yet. The fight in Congress went on, the Southern de- 
mands growing higher and haughtier, until the most 
trusted champion of the Northern views, Daniel Webster, 
on the 7th of March lowered his banner and made the 
famous plea for conciliation which, whatever its motive, 
was his own final disgrace and death-blow. Calhoun, who 
from his dying bed still sent his influence forth, had his 
last address read in the Senate by Mr. Mason, and died on 
the 31st of the same month. 

After eight months of discussion, Mr. Clay's " Omnibus 
Compromise" failed, but the several elements of it, in- 
cluding the Fugitive Slave Law, passed singly, as separate 
bills, during the ensuing summer (1850). 

Of course the passage of these bills, which instead of 
being merely a friendly arrangement of opposing policies 
were really a compromise of moral principle, did not bring 
peace. The year 1850 closed and 185 1 opened in the midst 
of seething agitation. The " May Anniversaries " of the 
various reformatory and religious societies formed a great 
feature of those days in New York, and among the others 
the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was one 
whose meetings in the old Broadway Tabernacle were al- 
ways densely thronged, — and not always with sympathiz- 
ers in the cause which the Society had at heart. 

Mr. Beecher was from his first coming a favorite speaker 
at those meetings, and in their turbulent audiences gained 
much of the training that served him so well in later days. 
In one of his speeches there, delivered May 9, 1850, he 
had been exhibiting the necessity of slavery to keep men 
brutal. " The slave," said he, " is made just good enough 
to be a slave, and no more. It is a penitentiary offense to 
teach him more." Here a person in the gallery who had 
been one of a group frequently interrupting the proceed- 



POLITICAL CAREER. 85 

ings, exclaimed, "It's a lie ! " The audience was shocked 
into a kind of consternation, but Mr. Beecher promptly and 
smilingly said: " Well, whether it is a penitentiary offense 
or not, I will not argue with the gentleman. Doubtless he 
has been there, and ought to know." Of course the tumultu- 
ous laughter and applause gave him the immediate control 
of the audience again, and he proceeded. 

The second of the Addresses in this volume is one de- 
scribing the nature of "American Slavery," which was 
delivered before the Society on May 6, 185 1. This address, 
devoted to a discussion of American Slavery from the 
stand-point of a Christian minister, was at once a helpful 
impulse to all the anti-slavery workers, and a stinging 
rebuke to the men of his own profession, who with notably 
few exceptions systematically avoided mention of the sin 
of those times. In one of his speeches in England, in 
1863, Mr. Beecher said: — 

" You never can understand what emasculation has been caused 
by the indirect influence of slavery. I have mourned all my 
mature life to see men growing up who were obliged to suppress 
all true conviction and sentiment, because it was necessary to 
compromise between the great antagonisms of North and South. 
There were the few pronounced anti-slavery men of the North, 
and the few pronounced slavery men of the South, and the Union 
lovers (as thej^ were called during the latter period) attempting 
to hold the two together, not by a mild and consistent adherence 
to truth plainly spoken, but by suppressing truth and conviction, 
and saying, ' Everything for the Union.' . . . They were at- 
tempting to lasso anti-slavery men by this word ' Union,' and to 
draw them over to pro-slavery sympathies and the party of the 
South, by saying, ' Slavery may be wrong and all that, but we 
must not give up the Union.' Not until the sirocco came, not 
until that great convulsion that threw men as with a backward 
movement of the arm of Omnipotence from the clutches of the 
South and from her sorceress-breath — not until then was it, that 
with their hundreds and thousands the men of the North stood 
on their feet and were men again." 

In this Anti-Slavery Society address may be seen others 
of Mr. Beecher's felicitous dealings with interruptions 
and questions from hostile hearers, put with the intent to 



86 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

embarrass the speaker, but always having the opposite 
effect of giving him a chance to turn the point against his 
attackers. 

The third address is an article from the Independent con- 
cerning the notable Presidential contest of 1856, between 
James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, and John C. 
Fremont, the candidate of the newly formed Republican 
party, which had grown up, suddenly but solidly, within 
four years. 

On the admission of California as a State, in 1850, Fre- 
mont had been sent to Washington as one of its Senators. 
In 1843-5, ^s captain of a government exploring party, he 
had located the passes of the Rocky Mountains, through 
which to-day's immense railway traffic is pouring; in 1846 
he had raised the " Bear flag " and declared the independ- 
ence of California, and, by prompt co-operation on land 
with Commodore Stockton by sea, had practically con- 
quered and secured to the United States the possession of 
that magnificent territory. He had acted for some time 
as Military Governor, and had taken prominent part in 
forming the Constitution, being the man by whose in- 
fluence the phrases that forever excluded slavery from 
the State were incorporated into that document. Events 
moved rapidly, both among the people and in Congress. 
In 185 1 Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" appeared, and 
thrilled the world with the dreadful possibilities of Ameri- 
can slavery: the effect of that book cannot be overesti- 
mated. In 1852 died Clay and Webster, while Charles 
Sumner entered the Senate as Webster's successor from 
Massachusetts: the day of compromises was passing. 

The administration of Pierce, 1853 to 1857, was signal- 
ized by the appearance of a new idea, put forth by Stephen 
A. Douglas, (Democratic) senator from Illinois, who, am- 
bitious to reach the Presidency, proposed — as a measure 
that should please the Democrats of both sections, North 
and South — the Kansas-Nebraska bill, allowing the people 
of those Territories to decide for themselves as to the exist- 
ence or non-existence of slavery ,when they should apply for 
admission as States. This idea, popularly called "Squatter 



POLITICAL CAREER. 87 

Sovereignty," was an express abrogation of the Missouri 
Compromise of 182 1, as both Kansas and Nebraska lay 
north of the line agreed upon and fixed as the permanent 
extreme northern limit of slave-holding States. The con- 
test was long and bitter, but the bill passed, and was signed 
by the President in May, 1854. Then followed the horrors 
of " bleeding Kansas," the rush of immigration thither from 
North and from South, and the hideous turmoil of border 
warfare. The free-soil men were determined to save the 
territory from slavery, and the pro-slavery men equally 
determined to inoculate it with that cancerous disease. 
Throughout the North the free-soil ardor grew and in- 
tensified. Money, furniture, implements of industry, arms, 
and ammunition were contributed for the use of the immi- 
grants, who were exhorted to defend their own lives and 
political rights, and to secure the territory for freedom. 
Mr. Beecher and Plymouth Church took active part in all 
this concentration of purpose and of force for the redemp- 
tion of Kansas. The political tangle of the time is clearly 
outlined in Ha}'' and Nicolay's elaborate " Life of Abra- 
ham Lincoln" {Century Magazine, 1887,) not only as to Mr. 
Lincoln's debates with Douglas in Illinois (which did so 
much to nationalize the name and just fame of the former), 
but also as to the struggle in Kansas, it is shown how the 
"border-ruffian" from Missouri was the convenient tool of 
Southern policy to outvote and even to destroy the bona fide 
settlers. 

Mr. Beecher's activity at this time was marked and influ- 
ential, but we have not found any single address which 
seemed to represent his customary way of setting forth 
the general principles of a particular crisis. 

Out of the Kansas struggle came the beginning of the 
Republican Party. The Free-soil Party had organized at 
Buffalo under Van Buren, bolting from the Whigs, in 1848; 
this was the germ: in 1852 the Whigs had finally gone 
under, when Pierce was elected: in 1856 the Kansas troub- 
les had permeated the entire North with discussion, and 
the expression of resentment at the perfidy of the Com- 
promise repeal took on increasingly the form of a deter- 



88 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

mination that slat^ery should not be extended, on any pretext, 
into new territories. This was the heart of the declarations 
of the new party; and John Charles Fremont, "the Path- 
finder;" the conqueror of California; South Carolinian by 
birth, but anti-slavery in principle; son-in-law of Senator 
Benton of Missouri (a life-long Southern anti-slavery man, 
and the projector of trans-continental traffic); husband 
of the brilliant and fascinating Jessie Benton; — a man 
combining a remarkable number of qualities, achieve- 
ments, and associations to surround his name with a 
halo of romance — was made the hero and the standard- 
bearer. 

The great cry of tlie Republicans was " Non-extension 
of slavery ! " of the Democrats, " Non-interference with 
Southern domestic institutions ! " and of a third party 
(the "Americans," with Millard Fillmore as candidate), 
"Peace at any price; peace and union!" Mr. Beecher, 
with the full consent of his church, threw himself into this 
political contest with all the force of his nature. He 
preached and spoke and wrote, constantly and vehemently. 
He worked throughout the State of New York, speaking 
two and three times a week, for three hours at a time, to 
open-air audiences of from eight thousand to ten thousand, 
and was universally recognized as a very potent factor in 
the rapid growth of Republican sentiment. Besides this, 
Fremont's campaign headquarters were in the business 
office of one of Mr. Beecher's earliest friends and parish- 
ioners; so that Plymouth Church had a large share in the 
formation and early direction of the Republican party. A 
new growth out of an old stem. Republicanism was cut 
off from the decaying Whig stock, and, planted in justice 
and nourished with the love of freedom, it increased 
mightily in strength and bore glorious fruit. 

Mr. Beecher's article (June 26, 1856) entitled "On 
Which Side is Peace?" (reproduced page 196), pre- 
sents the main theme of the discussions of that cam- 
paign, and shows how unerringly he struck at the central 
element of every matter in question. There was great 
fear lest the South be angered by the election of a free- 



POLITICAL CAREER. 89 

soil President, and war ensue; but Mr. Beecher's pre- 
diction, that war was much more likely to grow out of 
further truckling to the slave-power, in four years became 
fact. 

The success of James Buchanan (although Mr. Beecher 
and many other leading Republicans believed that Fre- 
mont was elected, but "counted out" in the returns from 
Pennsylvania, a State whose large number of electors de- 
termined that election) is well known. So also are the suc- 
ceeding events of the next few years: Chief Justice Taney's 
Dred Scott decision; the passing of personal-liberty laws in 
several of the free States to counteract the Fugitive Slave 
Law; the continued outrages and massacres of free-soil 
settlers in Kansas; and finally the rash enterprise of old 
John Brown of Ossawatomie, — a man always fanatical 
and ill - balanced, and at last crazed by strife and the 
murder of several of his family in Kansas, — who, with 
seventeen companions, seized the United States arsenal 
at Harper's Ferry, Va., with the hope of obtaining arms 
and establishing an insurrectionary center for the libera- 
tion of slaves. 

It was on Sunday, October 30, 1S59, while Brown and 
his little company lay in prison awaiting trial, that Mr. 
Beecher preached in Plymouth Church his sermon entitled 
"The Nation's Duty to Slavery" (page 203). Its faithful 
assertion of the principles of liberty and the abominations 
of slavery, combined with Christian kindness to the South 
and the duty of wise forbearance in action, — for the sake 
of the slave, of the master, and of the country. North and 
South, — shows the discretion, nobleness of thought, and 
sincerity of belief in God and the force of moral ideas, 
which go far to explain how it was that conservative peo- 
ple felt willing to submit themselves to the influence of 
Mr. Beecher's eloquence. No Southerner to-day would be 
able to dissent from his doctrine as expounded in that dis- 
course, or could help a warming of heart toward a man 
who, in the midst of such a tempest of popular excitement 
along the line of principles which he himself had done so 
much to inspire, could yet so temperately and consider- 



9° 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



ately and Christianly stretch forth the restraining hand of 
wisdom. 

Mr. Beecher's influence in the formative days of the Re- 
publican party was wider than appeared on the surface. 
He was in relations of friendly intercourse and interchange 
of counsel with men like Horace Greeley and Henry J. 
Raymond, the two journalists who were foremost in the 
shaping of principles and policies, and all the leaders in 
the reform-politics of the time looked to him not only for 
the eloquent enforcement of courses laid out but for wis- 
dom in preliminary councils. The newspapers reported 
his every word, — in pulpit, lecture-room, prayer-meeting, 
public assembly, special interview or casual street remark. 
When we consider how constantly and mercilessly reports 
of Mr. Beecher's utterances were put into the public prints 
— sometimes correct, often erroneous, and even maliciously 
perverted — and how unreservedly he poured forth at any 
and all times his honest thought or feeling, it is amazing 
that so much wisdom should appear in his history, and so 
little foolishness. How many men could endure such a 
record, — not once or twice, or during four years of a presi- 
dential term, but for forty continuous years of public life 
at the metropolis of the nation? No other human being 
has ever been put to such a test. His influence, then, was 
in some sense atmospheric; it passed from him, consciously 
and unconsciously; it spread abroad, and permeated not 
only the great metropolitan community in which he lived 
but the country at large. 

Those who insist on a division line between "sacred" 
and " secular " things can hardly understand how it should 
be that this man, to whom all lines of life and duty were 
sacred and infused with the conscious inspiration of divine 
and human love, could pass as he did with his church from 
the heats of the political struggle of 1856 into a period of 
intense spiritual and religious labor. His theories, — the 
healthfulness of enthusiasm, provided that a proper varia- 
tion of its objects relieved the tension of one line of facul- 
ties by bringing others into play; the natural modes of 




//<^r-^ ^-[yt^^i 



POLITICAL CAREER. 9 1 

appropriation of the all-pervasive influences of the Divine 
Spirit; and the practical strengthening effect of such 
"seasons of refreshment" for work in the world, — seem 
to have received justification at this time. From 1857 
to 1859, Plymouth Church enjoyed a very high state 
of religious activity and growth; at one time — in May, 
1858 — as large a number as three hundred and seventy- 
eight came into the church on the same Sunday: and the 
works of beneficence and charity were proportionally 
increased. 

It was in October, 1859, that Abraham Lincoln was in- 
vited to deliver a lecture in Cooper Institute, New York, 
which he agreed to do if he might make it a discussion of 
political questions. On February 27, i860, he made his 
speech, and the Tribune of the following day said: "No 
man ever before made such an impression on his first ap- 
peal to a New York audience." Mr. Lincoln "went with 
the multitude" to hear Beecher ; and naturally was not 
only deeply interested in the preacher, but took pains to 
see him, and in their social intercourse began a mutual 
confidence and friendship that bore rich fruit for the nation. 
Mr. Beecher became an ardent advocate of Lincoln's nom- 
ination (which was made in Chicago, May 16, i860), was a 
potent force in his election, and — in spite of his bombard- 
ments of the Administration on the emancipation question 
in the first two years of war — was one of the President's 
most helpful supporters during his four awful years of 
responsibility. 

On Thanksgiving Day, November 29, i860, Lincoln hav- 
ing been elected after a campaign of unparalleled intensity 
— in which, as before, Plymouth Church and its pastor 
were forward in active, every-day furtherance of the doc- 
trines preached on Sundays — Mr. Beecher made a review 
of the situation in a discourse entitled " Against a Com- 
promise of Principle " (page 224). In it, after glancing at 
the growth of Christ's kingdom all over the world, as 
measured by the initiatory declaration of Jesus that he 
came to teach, to heal, to deliver, the poor and the op- 
pressed — the people — he rejoices at the practical national 



92 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

verdict against the extension of slavery as declared in Lin- 
coln's election, and then appeals for manhood in the 
maintenance of that position, not only in spite, but even 
because, of the threatening storms: — 

" It is always safe to be right ; and our business is not so much 
to seek peace as to seek the causes of peace. Expedients are for 
an hour, but principles are for the ages. Just because the rains 
descend and winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting 
sands. Nothing can be permanent and nothing safe in this ex- 
igency that does not sink deeper than politics or money. We 
must touch the rock, or we shall never have firm foundations." 

About a month later, January 4, 1861, came a day which 
President Buchanan appointed for national fasting and 
humiliation and prayer, beseeching the Divine interference 
in behalf of peace. Of course the South and its Northern 
allies charged all the agitations to the fanatical opponents 
of slavery. Mr. Beecher preached a sermon entitled " Our 
Biameworthiness " (page 246), in which he showed that 
the troubles were upon the nation because not too much but 
too little had been done for liberty. 

The winter passed; March came; Abraham Lincoln was 
inaugurated president. The Southern leaders had already 
found that Secession was easier to plan than to effect, for 
throughout the South were many conservative Whig com- 
munities, followers of the earlier teachings of Alexander 
Stephens and his like, who sturdily held to the traditional 
love for the old Union and distrust of their life-long po- 
litical opponents, the Democrats. The South was not 
"solid," at that time. But whatever forces men into mut- 
ual association for common interest does very effectively 
solidify their action, and, by narrowing the channels of 
thought and feeling to a single line, unitizes their opin- 
ions, for all practical purposes. To " fire the Southern 
heart "and complete the severance which had been well 
advanced, Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter were besieged, 
fired on, and the gallant Anderson with his little force of 
United States troops forced to lower the national flag and 
march out. The political contest between " Freedom and 
Slavery " was at an end. 



POLITICAL CAREER. 93 

Division II. — Civil War, 

On Sunday, April 14, during the siege of Sumter, Mr. 
Beecher preached from the text: " And the Lord said unto 
Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me ? Speak unto the 
children of Israel, that they go forward." — Exod. xiv. 15. 
The discourse has been entitled "The Battle Set in Array " 
(page 269), and introduces the second division of the Ad- 
dresses, " Civil War." 

The story of " the uprising of a great people " has been 
well and often told. Fort Sumter did a double work: 
it fired the Southern heart, but it also aroused the North- 
ern soul. Men were white hot with indignation; yet Mr. 
Beecher's discourse of that day shows a calm, rational 
pursuit of the history of the conflict, a discriminating in- 
quiry as to the duty of the North in this crisis, before com- 
ing to his solemn appeal for steady determination and his 
final trumpet-blast of inspiration to " go forward " in the 
cause of human liberty. 

After this, the reader will find a succession of discourses 
as to men's duties during the war, the titles of which are 
largely self-explanatory. And any man who lived through 
the intensities of that time is to be pitied if to-day he can 
read, in cold type, these appeals to the highest and most 
unselfish feelings of the heart without wet eyes and a 
bounding pulse. The discourses are as follows: "The 
National Flag," — on presentation of colors to two Com- 
panies of the "Brooklyn Fourteenth Regiment;" "The 
Camp, its Dangers and Duties," — May, 1861; "Modes and 
Duties of Emancipation," — November 26, 1861, setting forth 
the declarations of Confederate Vice-President Stephens 
as to Slavery being the "corner-stone " of the Confederacy, 
and considering the condition of the thousands of escaping 
slaves and the probable results of national emancipation; 
"The Success of American Democracy," — April 13, 1862, 
the anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter, — 
one of his felicitous tracings of the force of generic prin- 
ciples in the development of events; " National Injustice 
and Penalty," — September 22, 1862, just after Lincoln's 



94 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation and Suspension 
of the Habeas Corpus, — in strong maintenance of the Presi- 
dent's war-powers and gratulation that at last the Nation 
had officially repudiated the sin which had — by inevitable 
action of physical and moral law — evoked such terrible 
punishment; "The Ground and Forms of Government," — 
November 22, 1862, — a philosophical consideration of the 
character of peoples as the soil out of which their national 
governments must and do grow, with especial reference to 
a maintenance of moral principle in the then pending 
election in the State of New York; and, finally, "Liberty 
under Laws," — December 28, 1862, while the confirmatory 
Proclamation of Emancipation was expected from the 
President, — a discourse showing the necessity of obedience 
to the law of any principle, in order to make that principle 
effective, and the responsibilities of benevolent action for 
the freedom of other men, which are assumed by those who 
claim liberty for themselves. 

These few sermons do not begin to indicate the conti- 
nuity and intensity of Mr. Beecher's active exertions during 
the years mentioned. He was at all times one of the focal 
points of heat and light, vitalizing the heart and clarifying 
the vision of the country. In the newspapers, on the 
platform, in his own pulpit and lecture-room, in social and 
commercial and religious and benevolent and patriotic and 
political gatherings he was to be found, and always at 
work. To arouse and enlighten the public conscience and 
drive up the official heads of the nation to emancipation, 
and to sustain the authorities and the army in forward- 
ing the war to that end, as the only safe and permanent, 
because the only just, foundation for peace between North 
and South — this was his consuming desire. In many 
powerful articles he urged emancipation on the President, 
whose apparent reluctance to follow this advice was not 
then fully understood. In the light of later events, we 
have learned, as Mr. Beecher did, that Mr. Lincoln was 
willing and glad to go just as fast and as far as he would 
be sustained in doing by public opinion, but no more; 
and conscientiously believed that to be his wisest course. 



POLITICAL CAREER. 95 

Doubtless he was right; and yet it was needful that there 
should be also such moral seers as Beecher to divine, and, 
like flaming beacons on the headlands, to throw light upon 
the course the people must take. 

In the spring of 1863, Mr. Beecher was worn out with his 
labors, for he had spared nothing of himself, and his physi- 
cian and his Plymouth people pushed him off to Europe for 
some months of recuperation. The narrative of this trip 
in the companionship of his friend, Dr. John H. Raymond, 
then president of Vassar College, has been told by both of 
them, and may be found — full of beauty and interest and 
refreshment — in Dr. Raymond's " Life and Letters " before 
referred to (page 40). It was said at the time that Mr. 
Beecher had been sent by the Government to try to influ- 
ence English opinion; but that was of course untrue. He 
went simply for rest, and in passing through England 
refused to speak there at all, except at a complimentary 
"Breakfast" tendered him by Congregational clergymen 
and laymen in London. 

His mind about it may be found in the following extract 
from a private letter written at Brussels, Sept. 9, 1863, just 
before the two friends started to leave the Continent; — 

"John begins to feel homesick. His face is set toward the 
West, Mine would be also but that I know not what I shall 
have to do in England, and I do not wish to get up a fever of 
returning and then find myself obliged to remain several weeks 
longer. So I contrive not to think, except at intervals. How 
glad I shall be if when in London I find that I need not speak! 
In truth, my friend, I have no heart for it. England is selfish 
and cannot be made to recognize it. Her opinion of us has very 
little value. We do not need her, and she is in little danger of 
going into the fight. Why should we attempt to ameliorate her 
prejudices and to thrust Unwelcome truth down her incredulous 
throat } I should not hesitate to pass on, refusing to speak, but 
for one circumstance. There is a struggling band of noble men 
who from the first have been true to us and are advocating, 
through good report and evil report, American ideas in England. 
Should they say to me, ' You owe it to true friends who have 
been faithful to you in the darkest hours, to strengthen their 
hands and give them whatever influence your presence may exert,' 



96 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

I do not see how I could refuse to listen, and comply. But I long 
to get home. I am well, have escaped my catarrh, am rested, 
and now desire to go to work again." 

On his return to England he did speak, however, and all 
the world knows how and with what effect. We have re- 
produced, as prefatory to his speeches in England, the 
article by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, which on Mr. 
Beecher's return was published in the Atlantic MojitJily for 
January, 1864. It is entitled " The Minister Plenipoten- 
tiary," — a joke which, like most of Dr. Holmes's wit, is 
instinct with wisdom and truth. This article (page 422) is 
the best description of Mr. Beecher's extraordinary triumph 
in England that has ever been published, and it shows the 
profound effect which his unauthorized but splendidly au- 
thenticated mission had, both abroad and at home. 

The public speeches at Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, 
Liverpool, London, and those at several farewell break- 
fasts, follow next in the volume; and it has seemed of 
especial interest to give also the essential portion of Mr. 
Beecher's own account of the speeches (page 640) — not a 
formal written document, but an off-hand talk to friends, 
one of whom had thoughtfully provided the presence of 
Mr. Ellinwood, for so many years, before and since, Mr. 
Beecher's regular stenographic reporter. 

Following this is his address (page 654) delivered after 
his return at the enthusiastic home-reception by his fellow 
citizens of Brooklyn (November 19, 1863), in which he 
describes to them how it was that the upper classes of 
Great Britain were adverse to the Federal cause in the War 
and yet were restrained from unfriendly action by the 
great heart of the common people, who, although non- 
voting, exercised a strong influence upon the governing 
and commercial classes. It is — like portions of his speeches 
in England — a rational and affecting appeal to men to 
" Put yourself in his place " and look at things from other 
people's point of view; to see the other side; to make 
allowances for differing circumstances and consequent 
opinions and sentiments; and so — in consonance with his 
theological and religious teachings — a catholic plea for 



POLITICAL CAREER. 97 

liberty of opinion with harmony of feeling. It produced 
almost as marked an effect hn American resentment against 
England, as his efforts on the other side of the water did 
upon English misunderstanding and prejudice against the 
North, during the war. 

The years 1864-5 entailed less exhausting work upon Mr. 
Beecher than had been laid on him in the foregoing years. 
The re-election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864 enlisted his ar- 
dent efforts; but the tide of war had turned, and moreover 
the entire enginery of the North had now become organized 
and was in regular operation — socially, commercially, fis- 
cally, industrially, and in all lines of material and moral 
force — sustaining the Government as a matter of course. 
Side currents there were, eddies of discontent and reaction, 
turbulent passages caused by temporary obstructions, but 
the great fiood of life in all the Northern States flowed 
full and strong in one direction. In March, 1864, Congress 
revived the grade of Lieutenant-General in order to con- 
fer it on Grant, whose continued Western successes had 
drawn all eyes upon him, and he was brought to the East 
and put in command of all the armies, with especial con- 
trol of the Army of the Potomac, which, down to this time, 
had done magnificent fighting but under generals who 
allowed their victories to remain indecisive and fruitless. 

This now was changed, and the battles of The Wilder- 
ness, Spottsylvania, Five Forks, Petersburg, mark the 
dreadful, bloody, but irresistible steps that led to Appo- 
mattox and peace. On April 9, 1865, the Confederate 
army laid down their arms, were paroled as prisoners of 
war, and permitted to return to their homes. In the " Life 
of Robert E. Lee" we read: " The victors were magnani- 
mous ; they abstained from every appearance of insult 
toward the vanquished. Abundant victuals were distrib- 
uted to the prisoners who were dying of hunger." And 
this was not only the official action of commanders, but 
the Federal soldiers themselves, gallantly appreciating 
the gallantry of their recent foes, joyfully fraternized with 
them, offering their own rations, tobacco, and good fellow- 
ship generally. 
7 



98 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

Of men in responsibility, perhaps the two who had 
borne the heaviest burdens of care, and who were person- 
ally most interested in ending the rebellion, were President 
Lincoln and General Grant. On March 28, occurred an 
interview between the President and Generals Grant and 
Sherman, at City Point, Virginia, at which time the two 
soldiers thought that it would require one more severe 
battle to compel submission. Mr. Lincoln was deeply 
moved, exclaiming that there had been blood enough shed, 
and asking if it could not be avoided. " That depends," 
was the answer, "on Jefferson Davis and General Lee." 
And to General Sherman* the President said that " all he 
wanted for us was to defeat the opposing armies and to 
get the men composing the Confederate armies back to 
their homes, at work on their farms and in their shops " 
and "to restore all the men of both sections to their 
homes." General Grant was like-minded, and upon Lee's 
surrender urged the disbanding and separating of the 
rebel armies. He imposed no humiliating conditions, but 
sent home the disbanded Southern men with food and 
seed-corn and even allowed them to take their horses for 
the working of their farms. Sherman's impulses were still 
more generous in receiving the surrender of Johnston's 
North Carolina army, and Grant was sent to modify the 
terms granted, making them conform to those given Lee 
at Appomattox. In short, the men who spent themselves in 
fi^hthi^ the rebellion ivere the first and the freest in reconcilia-, 
tion with the conquered rebels. 

The whole hollow Confederacy — exhausted and emptied 
— now fell in. Among the hitherto resistant points was 
the city of Charleston, South Carolina, where the active 
rebellion began; now — desolated by war and fire and 
poverty — it was re-occupied, and preliminary to the work 
of restoring its obstructed harbor and rebuilding the shat- 
tered shores, the Government thought it well to signal- 
ize the downfall of Secession and the original treason of 
attacking the national flag, by formally raising the stars 



*Memoiis of William T. Sherman. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 
1883. 



• POLITICAL CAREER. 99 

and stripes on the ruins of Fort Sumter, whence they had 
been hauled down April 14, 1861, four years before. The 
ceremonies were imposing: all departments of the gov- 
ernment were represented, and the governors of the loyal 
States, with many invited guests of eminent position or 
influence. Mr. Beecher was chosen, as the natural ex- 
ponent of the loyal North, to deliver the oration of the 
day; Major (by that time, however, Major-General) Robert 
Anderson, the gallant commander of Moultrie and Sumter 
under the " baptism of fire," with his own hands hauled up 
the identical flag that had been lowered, and a salute of 
one hundred guns was fired — participated in "from every 
fort and rebel battery that fired on Sumter." Mr. Beecher's 
oration (page 676) is a grand summing up of the four 
dreadful years — their meaning, their suffering, their achieve- 
ments; the benefits accruing from the war to the nation at 
large, to the North, to the South; the lessons that had 
been taught, and the spirit in which should be undertaken 
the new work of "rebuilding the republic." With this 
address is fitly closed the division of "Civil War," — an era 
of great events that developed great men, yet a period 
during which it is fairly within the bounds of probability 
to say that the power exerted by the heart and brain of 
Henry Ward Beecher was not equaled by the merely 
personal influence of any other single man. 

Division III. — Civil Liberty. 

On the evening of the very day in which the nation's joy 
was thus symbolized and expressed at Sumter, President 
Lincoln was assassinated. That was on Friday: on Tues- 
day the steamers brought the crushing news, and early 
the next day the sad party were speeding northward again. 
On Sunday of the following week (April 23), Mr. Beecher 
made a discourse on "Abraham Lincoln." Said he: — 

" Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemi- 
sphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. 
The joy of final victory was as sudden as if no man had expected 
it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere from heaven. I: 
rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and 



lOO HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

ran down through the land in irresistible course. Men embraced 
each other in brotherhood, that were strangers in the flesh. 
They sang, or prayed, or, deeper yet, many could only think 
thanksgiving and weep gladness. . . . 

" In one hour, under the blow of a single bereavement, joy lay 
without a pulse, without a gleam, or breath. A sorrow came that 
swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest 
and field, rolling thunder along the sky, disheveling the flowers, 
daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness 
and darkness across the land and upon the mountains. Did ever 
so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feel- 
ings? It was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sor- 
row •, — noon and midnight without a space between ! " 

We have selected this discourse (page 497) as the open- 
ing address of the division entitled "Civil Liberty," be- 
cause in it is to be found recorded the sentiment of the 
great President in relation to the land he died for, and 
the spirit of conservative wisdom and Christian consider- 
ation which was shown by Henry Ward Beecher as an in- 
structor of the people in the trying times that followed. 

The salient points were: Faith in American institu- 
tions; a determination to see slavery finally ended; and a 
spirit of generous conciliation towards the vanquished 
South. 

" The blow, however, has signally failed. The cause is not 
stricken; it is strengthened. This nation has dissolved — but in 
tears only. It stands, four-square, more solid, to-day, than any 
pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither wasted, nor daunted, 
nor disordered. Men hate slavery and love liberty with stronger 
hate and love to-day than ever before. The Government is not 
weakened, it is made stronger. How naturally and easily were 
the ranks closed! Another stepped forward, in the hour that the 
one fell, to take his place and his mantle. . . . Republican 
institutions have been vindicated in this experience as they never 
were before. . . . God, I think, has said, by the voice of 
this event, to all nations of the earth, ' Republican liberty, based 
upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe.' 

" Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed with 
new influence. . . . Men will receive a new impulse of pa- 
triotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal the whole coun- 
try which he loved so well : I swear you, on the altar of his mem- 



FOL/r/CAL CAREER. loi 

ory, to be more faithful to the country for which he has perished. 
Men will, as they follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that 
slavery against which he warred, and which in vanquishing him 
has made him a martyr and a conqueror : I swear you, by the 
memory of this martyr, to hate slavery with an unappeasable 
hatred. Men will admire and imitate his unmoved firmness, his 
inflexible conscience for the right; and yet his gentleness, as ten- 
der as a woman's, his moderation of spirit, which not all the heat 
of party could inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of this 
country shake out of its place: I swear you to an emulation of 
his justice, his moderation, and his mercy." 

These three articles of faith were soon to be put to the 
test. It is hardly necessary here to enter upon a full dis- 
cussion of the theories that arose at the end of the war as 
to the " rebuilding of the republic," and yet some note 
must be made of them to understand the continuity of 
Mr. Beecher's course, and the first variance between his 
line of action and that of the Republican party. 

The elements to be harmonized at that time were many 
and discordant. Mr. Beecher tersely says (page 736): — 

" President Lincoln had been assassinated, and Johnson had as- 
sumed his place. The statesmen whose vigor and courage had 
carried the country through the civil war were less adapted to 
the delicate task of restoring the discordant States to peace and 
unity than they had been to the sudden duties of war. 

"In a general way there were two parties; one counseling a 
speedy re-adjustment, and the other, a longer probation. 

" President Lincoln and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, in 
the last conversations which I had with them, inclined to the 
policy of immediate restoration; and their views had great weight 
with me." 

President Johnson, a man arisen, like Lincoln, from the 
" poor white " class of a border State, had been a sturdy 
Tennessee Unionist throughout the war, and had suffered 
bitterly from the rebellion. He hated secession and its 
leaders with an almost savage hatred, and was conspicuous 
after Lincoln's death among those who cried that "treason 
should be made odious." He instituted the military com- 
mission that tried the conspirators who compassed Lin- 
coln's murder, and proclaimed large rewards for the capt- 



I02 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ure of Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders. 
He even wished to arrest General Lee, but General Grant 
sturdily blocked that procedure. The President was a 
good man for a fight, but a dangerous one for the adjust- 
ments of a peaceful settlement. 

Mr. Johnson, however, was loyal, not only to the Union, 
but also to the plan for its restoration which his great 
predecessor, Lincoln, had mapped out; and upon this 
he squarely planted himself. Its chief feature was: that 
the seceded States should be replaced as they had been, 
except that they should first, as States, acquiesce in the 
abolition of slavery, repudiate the rebel debt, and repeal 
the ordinances of secession. 

President Lincoln had already, a year and a half before 
(December, 1863), issued a proclamation of pardon and 
restoration of the rights of property (except in slaves) to 
all rebels who should abandon their purposes and take the 
oath of allegiance, agreeing to abide by the governmental 
acts and proclamations concerning slavery; and, moreover, 
providing for a reorganization of any State government 
by not less than one-tenth of the number of voters of the 
State. His views were positive and clear. 

The Thirty-eighth Congress had closed its session a 
month before the collapse of the rebellion, on March 3, 
1865; Lincoln's assassination was on April 14; the next 
Congress was not to assemble till December 4: so that 
Mr. Johnson came into the presidency during an interval. 
The rebellion had suddenly ceased to be; and it was neces- 
sary to act. The constitutional provisions which made it 
possible for the Government to move steadily forward, with- 
out hesitation or convulsion, — even in the face of such colos- 
sal events as the instantaneous silence of peace after four 
clangorous years of war and the assassination of the head 
of the nation in the midst of the protections of a great 
capital, — were at the time the wonder and admiration of 
the world. And it is right, in judging of the acts of a man 
of Mr. Johnson's antecedents and nature, — strong and hon- 
est as an ox, stubborn and vengeful as a mule, — that we 
should consider what would naturally be the mental atti- 



POLITICAL CAREER. 1 03 

tude of one thus unexpectedly placed in position of great 
responsibility. Mr. Lincoln — sagacious and patient, while 
tenacious of his purposes — would probably have assembled 
Congress in extra session; and, acting by influence rather 
than by authority, having the gratitude of the South and 
the confidence of the North, would perhaps have found 
nieans of letting Congress have their say while they gave 
him his way. But some elation after so sudden a rise was 
natural to Mr. Johnson or the average man (Mr. Lincoln 
was not an average man); and thus the new President 
boldly accepted the responsibility of action and assumed 
the power. 

He issued an amnesty proclamation, excepting from it 
all who, after having been civil or military officers of the 
United States, had held office under the so-called Con- 
federacy. Between May 29 and July 13 he appointed Pro- 
visional Governors over seven States, with instructions to 
assemble Constitutional Conventions which should form- 
ally accept the terms and conditions above mentioned, 
and then proceed to elect State legislators and congres- 
sional representatives. This was all done; and the State 
legislatures also elected their United States Senators, so 
that nearly all were ready to enter the Thirty-ninth Con- 
gress on its assembling, Dec. 4, 1865. 

The President's plan was good, as far as it went; but, 
first, it was incomplete, making no provision for the status 
of the liberated slaves; and, secondly, he made the mistake 
of acting in time of peace as if under martial law, and of 
usurping for the Executive functions that belonged to the 
Legislative branch of the United States government. Of 
course this instantly bred hot dissatisfaction, and the sum- 
mer of 1865 was filled with cries of increasing dissonance 
throughout the North. 

In October, shortly after returning to his pulpit from his 
summer rest, Mr. Beecher preached a discourse (which will 
be found at page 713), entitled, "Conditions of a Restored 
Union." In this, as was usual with him, he carefully went 
over the antecedent grounds of fact and of principle, — 
in reference to the war, the end of the rebellion, the condi- 



I04 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

tion of the South and its people, white and black, the Presi- 
dent's ideas and acts, — and then laid down the lines along 
which he conceived that the country could best be re- 
united, with the most equitable and therefore the most 
secure hope of permanent stability. 

A few sentences selected from successive portions of the 
discourse, although not immediately connected, may give 
briefiy the drift of his thought: — 

" I can scarcely regard the state of mind that has existed for 
years in the South as other than a political insanity, and I cannot 
expect, nor ask you to expect, that in one hour they will get over 
their enmities, their life-long prejudices and their humiliation. 
. . . We are to remember that convalescence is often slower 
and longer than the run of the disease itself." 

" Nor are we to demand a surrender of theories and philoso- 
phies as a condition of confidence and trust. . . . Let men 
say that secession ought to have been allowed — if they accept the 
fact that it is for ever disalloiucd hy the people of this continent." 

" It is said that there should be a spirit of humilit}' on the part 
of the South, . . . that God does not receive sinners back till 
they are humbled. When you are God you need not receive your 
brethren back till they are humbled." 

" I think that he will be the wisest and most politic statesman 
who knows how to carry them through this terrible and painful 
transition with the least sacrifice of their pride, and with the 
greatest preservation of their self-respect ; and if it can be done 
by the generosity of the North, a confidence will spring up at the 
South in the future that will repay us for the little self-sacrifice 
that we may make." 

" I am anxious that those who have hitherto been most active 
for liberty and humanity should produce the first and deepest 
impression on our brethren in the South by real kindness ; and I 
am very thankful that those who have been representative men 
in the North, in the main — Gerritt Smith, Mr. Garrison, and 
others such as they — have been found pleading for lenity, and 
opposed to rigor and uncharitableness." 

" It is desirable, on every account, that the South should be 
restored at the earliest practicable moment to a participation in 
our common government. It is foreign to our American ideas 
that men should be dispossessed of civil rights, if we expect to 
treat them in any other way than as criminals." 

" But there are some conditions precedent." 



POLITICAL CAREER. 105 

" It is right that State conventions should be required to 
abolish slavery, and to assist in the amendment of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States in that regard." 

"And they must, in convention, not only annul their act of 
secession, but pronounce it to have been ab initio void." 

" I think that, also, before the States of the South are re-in- 
stated, these conventions should have ascertained, and prescribed, 
and established, the condition of the freedman. They should 
have established, first, his right to labor, and to hold property, 
with all its concomitants. They should have established his 
right to labor as he pleases, where he pleases, and for whom he 
pleases, and to have sole and undivided the proceeds of his own 
earnings, with the liberty to do with them as he pleases, just as 
any other citizen does. They should also have made him to be 
the equal of all other men before the courts and in the eye of the 
law. He should be just as much qualified to be a witness as the 
man that assaults him. He should be under the protection of 
the laws, with all the opportunities of availing himself of their 
benefits which any other citizen has." 

" It would have been wise, also, for these conventions to have 
given him the right of suffrage — for it is alwaj's inexpedient and 
foolish to deny a man his natural rights." 

" I do not think it consistent with the nature of our institutions 
for the Federal Government, in and of itself, to attempt perma- 
nently to take care of four millions of freedmen b}'- militarv gov- 
ernment. These men are scattered in fifteen States; they are 
living contiguous to their old masters ; the kindness of the white 
men in the South is more important to them than all the policies 
of the nation out together. And the best intentions of the gov- 
ernment will be defeated if the laws that are made touching this 
matter are such as are calculated to excite the animosity and 
hatred of the white people in the South toward the black people 
there. I except the single decree of emancipation. That must 
stand, though men dislike it. A true and wise statesmanship 
consists in conciliating the late masters, and persuading them to 
accept the freedmen in a spirit of kindness and helpfulness. Call- 
ing names, suspecting motives, objurgations, will not help the 
black man. President Johnson thinks it better that the colored 
people should receive their rights with the consent of the South; 
and he waits for it, and influences rather than commands ; and I 
think he is acting with enlightened judgment." 

" We are to educate the negroes, and to Christianly educate 
them. We are to raise them in intelligence more and more, until 



lo6 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

they shall be able to prove themselves worthy of citizenship. 
For, I tell you, all the laws in the world cannot bolster a man up 
so as to place him any higher than his own moral worth and nat- 
ural forces put him." 

"We have, then, a heavy work before us. We have a work that 
will tax our faith, and patience, and resources. But it is a work 
which we may pursue, believing that He who hath brought us 
thus far in it will carry us through to the end." 

If this discourse be carefully read, it will be seen to con- 
tain the essence of all the guaranties and conditions finally 
effected after years of renewed struggle under the Recon- 
struction Acts; but it differed from the position of the 
political leaders of the time in that it preferred to offer 
these conditions to the Southern people for their acceptance 
before inviting their participation in the government, while 
the Republican managers preferred to have Congress impose 
them, in the guise of penalty for rebellion. Mr. Beecher 
read human nature well. But his "magnanimity" was 
laughed at and his position fiercely denounced as an aban- 
donment of the blacks; his forebodings of the alternate 
evil, however, were terribly realized in history. 

For by this time the political passions of all sides were 
aroused. The Republican leaders, fearful lest the Presi- 
dent should commit irretrievable blunders, and bring in 
anew a Southern element which should unite with the 
Democratic opposition of the North and weaken their 
power, were blind to anything good in the Johnson plan or 
man, and the political press was wildly violent; the Anti- 
slavery element, with the exception of some of the wisest 
and most notable of the old-time leaders, fearful lest the 
fruits of their long and bitter warfare for freedom should 
be sacrificed in the very hour of victory, were with the 
foremost in denunciation of the President and all who 
supported him. And, on the other hand, Mr. Johnson, 
made angry by the outcry, was not only stubborn in hold- 
ing to what he had done but evinced his weakness by tak- 
ing pains to show disfavor to representative Northerners, 
and favor to Southerners, who shrewdly began to pay court 
to him. His action was impolitic to the last degree. Yet, 



POLITICAL CAREER. 107 

inborn and inbred prejudices will tell, in spite of reason; 
and this " poor white," whose whole life had been a deter- 
mined struggle to rise in the social scale, could not see his 
aristocratic fellow Southerners at his feet without feeling 
the flattery of the situation, and yielding to it. 

In December Congress reassembled; but while the South- 
ern States had, as above stated, gone forward and made 
their preparations subject to the conditions demanded by 
the President, under full expectation of admission to the 
national legislature, their representatives were met by 
Congress with a prompt refusal of admission and referred 
to a committee on credentials, who kept them cooling their 
heels and heating their tempers in the lobby; the various 
grounds of opposition to their entrance being the illegality 
of the acts of the Constitutional Conventions, of the writs 
under which the legislators and congressmen were elected, 
and other proper points of technicality which President 
Johnson and the Southern reorganizers had in their haste 
overlooked. 

Meantime the first action of Congress (Dec. 18) was the 
admirable one of proposing the Thirteenth Amendment 
to the Constitution, by which slavery was forever abolished 
and Congress given power to enforce the provision by 
appropriate legislation. This was promptly ratified by 
the requisite two-thirds of all the States, Northern and 
Southern. But the winter passed in strife, the point of 
keenest discussion being the condition of the freed slaves: 
the President demanding that the States should be ad- 
mitted, and allowed to regulate that themselves; the major- 
ity in Congress demanding full National protection to the 
freedmen before any of the States should be readmitted. 
Indeed, the contest now took on the aspect of a question 
as to the Restoration or the Reconstruction of the Southern 
States. 

But another element was all this time rising into promi- 
nence and increasing power, and that was the ancient race- 
prejudice of the Southern whites towards the blacks, and 
their dread — born of the intemperate contest between Pres- 
ident Johnson and his opponents at the North — lest the 



io8 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

negro should be given political power, or, as they expressed 
it, "the bottom rail put on top." That was, in effect, the 
thing threatened at the North (for the protection of the 
negro and the continuance in power of the Republican 
party) and regarded at the South with a mingled feeling 
of terror and unutterable detestation. 

To get a candid view of the ideas and mutual miscon- 
ceptions that this era bred in the two peoples — for the 
South and the North had been educated, and still con- 
tinued, on two distinct and unrelated planes of political 
and social life — one cannot do better than read Judge 
A. W. Tourgee's remarkable study of those times, based 
on his own experience and observation of seventeen years' 
residence as a Northern man at the South after the war: 
"A Fool's Errand; By One of the Fools." Discussing the 
plans of reconstruction, he notes the fact that none of 
them took any account of 

" That strange and mysterious influence which ranges all the 
way from a religious principle to a baseless prejudice, according 
to the stand-point of the observer, but always remains a most un- 
accountable yet still stubborn fact in all that pertains to the 
governmental organisms of the South, — the popular feeling in 
regard to the African population of that section. That a servile 
race, isolated from the dominant one by the fact of color and the 
universally accepted dogma of inherent inferiority, to say noth- 
ing of a very general belief of its utter incapacity for the civiliza- 
tion to which the Caucasian has attained, should be looked on 
with distrust and aversion, if not with positive hatred, as a co- 
ordinate political power, by their former masters, would seem so 
natural that-one could hardly expect men of ordinary intelligence 
to overlook it. That this should arouse a feeling of very intense 
bitterness when it came as the result of conquest, and the free- 
dom enjoyed by the subject-race was inseparably linked with the 
memory of loss and humiliation in the mind of the master, would 
seem equally apparent. But when to these facts was added the 
knowledge that whoever should advocate such an elevation of 
the blacks, in that section, was certain to be regarded as putting 
himself upon their social level in a community where the offender 
against caste becomes an outlaw in fact, it seems impossible that 
the wise men of that day should have been so blind as not to 
have seen that they were doing the utmost possible injury to the 



POLITICAL CAREER. 109 

colored race, the country, and themselves, by propounding a plan 
of re-organization which depended for its success upon the effect- 
ive and prosperous administration of State governments by this 
class [the negroes] in connection with the few of the dominant 
race, who, from whatever motives, might be willing to put them- 
selves on the same level with them in the estimation of their 
white neighbors." 

In view of these facts it is not strange that the rebuffed, 
humiliated, and alarmed Southerners should in their State 
legislatures begin to make laws for the practical subjection 
of the freedmen, who were already talked of as not only 
freed but to be made the equals of their late owners, and 
who, with political power in their hands, in places where 
they were a majority of the inhabitants, would become the 
practical rulers. The laws made by the new Provisional 
Southern State legislatures were in truth oppressive and 
unjust to this unfortunate class, thus ground between the 
upper and the nether millstone; and were in turn met in 
Congress by the Civil Rights Bill, which not only declared 
the blacks citizens, with equal rights before the law, but 
provided many specifications looking to social as well as 
political equality with the whites — which of course inten- 
sified the feeling tenfold. The bill, vetoed by the Presi- 
dent, was repassed over his veto (April 9, 1866), as were the 
Freedman's Bureau and Refugees Bills. In June, Congress 
proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 
providing: — 

(i) The citizenship and equality before the law of all persons 
born or naturalized in the United States ; (2) the apportionment of 
representation in the Federal Congress according to the number 
of inhabitants in each State [/. e., counting all the negroes instead 
of two-thirds of them as heretofore, when their masters voted oti 
them, as slaves], any abridgment of voting privileges except for 
crime to reduce the representation proportionately [a political 
inducemeJit not to prevent the blacks from voting] ; (3) the exclu- 
sion of all men, who had violated an oath to support the United 
States Constitution, from Federal or State office until relieved of 
this disability by a two-thirds vote of Congress \^practical dis- 
franchisement of all Southern inen of prominence] ; and (4) the 
validity of the United States debt and invalidity of the rebel debt 
or any claim of compensation for loss of slaves. 



no HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

It was two years (1868) before this amendment was 
adopted by the requisite number of States, and meantime 
the political iight raged. In August, 1866, the sentiment 
of those in the North who for various reasons thought that 
President Johnson's plan was the wiser, even though it had 
been unwisely forwarded by him, and who believed that 
the quickest and most natural, and therefore the most en- 
during, road to peace and relations of mutual interest be- 
tween the negroes and the whites (who iniist have the labor 
of their former slaves) would come by the gradual re- 
adjustment of industrial, social, and political conditions 
between those elements themselves, without outside inter- 
ference, took shape in several conventions deprecating the 
policy of Congressional enactments on these matters. One 
of these assemblies was convened in Cleveland, Ohio, that 
of the "Soldiers and Sailors" (who having had active share 
in putting down the rebellion had some opinions to offer 
about the treatment of the rebels), and invited Mr. Beecher 
to act as its Chaplain. He could not go, but on August 30, 
1866, wrote a letter to the Convention, giving his views on 
the situation. It became known as "the Cleveland Letter." 

After making several points: — no place for a State under 
our theory of government except in the Union; the in- 
crease of complication by every month of delay; the unfit- 
ness of the Federal Government to exercise minor police 
and local restraint; scorn of the fear that the impoverished 
South would again rule the land if admitted — he gave the 
following analysis of the position of the freedmen, for 
whose freedom it must be remembered he had spent the 
chief power and interest of his whole previous public life. 

"The sooner we dismiss from our minds the idea that the 
freedmen can be classified and separated from the white popula- 
tion, and nursed and defended by themselves, the better it will be 
for them and us. The negro is part and parcel of Southern 
society. He cannot be prosperous while it is unprospered. Its 
evils will rebound upon him. Its happiness and re-invigoration 
cannot be kept from his participation. The restoration of the 
South to amicable relations with the North, the re-organization 
of its industry, the re-inspiration of its enterprise and thrift, will 



POLITICAL CAREER. ill 

all redound to the freedman's benefit. Nothing is so dangerous 
to the freedman as an unsettled state of society in the South. 
On him comes all the spite, and anger, and caprice, and revenge. 
He will be made the scapegoat of lawless and heartless men. 
• Unless we turn the Government into a vast military machine, 
there cannot be armies enough to protect the freedmen while 
Southern society remains insurrectionary. If Southern society 
is calmed, settled, and occupied, and soothed with new hopes and 
prosperous industries, no armies will be needed. Riots will sub- 
side, lawless hangers-on will be driven ofi^ or better governed, and 
a way will be gradually opened to the freedmen, through educa- 
tion and industry, to full citizenship, with all its honors and 
duties. . . . 

" If the colored people have the stamina to undergo the hard- 
ships which every uncivilized people has undergone in its upward 
progress, they will in due time take their place among us. That 
place cannot be bought, nor bequeathed, nor gained by sleight of 
hand. It will come to sobriety, virtue, industry, and frugality. 
As the nation cannot be sound until the South is prosperous, so, 
on the other extreme, a healthy condition of civil society in the 
South is indispensable to the welfare of the freedmen." 

Let any man read that letter; then ponder the demoniac 
madness developed in the South during the years that 
followed, virhen the Ku-Klux Rebellion gradually took 
form against what the Southerners deemed a wanton in- 
tention to humiliate and degrade them, and, increasingly, 
against the rise of the negroes to political power not only 
of votes but of office, — the days when the few steadfast and 
intelligent Unionists of Northern and Southern birth who 
undertook to guide the movement at the South were over- 
whelmed by the mass of ignorance and rapacity that took 
possession of legislatures and governing positions, and 
who made the name of the " Carpet-Bag Governments " a 
badge of shameless robbery. Let him then read the sec- 
ond of these "Cleveland Letters," (page 742) addressed by 
Mr. Beecher to his church, through one of its members, 
replying to the excited letters and protests that came 
pouring in upon him from all about, — a letter that reaffirms 
the first, but with more elaborate reasoning and explana- 
tion, and with a distinct repudiation of the absurd violence 
and " increasing indiscretions " of President Johnson, who 



112 HEARY WARD B EEC HER. 

in the mean time had been "swinging round the circle" 
with wild speeches and almost frantic denunciations of all 
who took the right of differing from what he called "my 
policy." Looking at Mr. Beecher's prophetic utterances 
and their striking verification, the reader must be struck 
with the clear-eyed foresight of political conditions and 
after-developments, and also with the masterly quietude of 
a great man's spirit in the midst of turbulence and peril — 
not physical danger, but the greater evils of disruption 
in friendly, social, political, and ecclesiastical ties, that 
threatened him. 

As this point marks real divergence between Mr. Beecher 
and his party — although he continued to act with them 
because their aims and general direction were more nearly 
his own than were those of the other party — it is worth 
while to bring out a little more clearly his position; not 
that it is, or was, at all questionable, if men would judge 
him by his own utterances, but that their partisan blind- 
ness made his critics incapable of seeing two sides to a 
question. 

In his second letter Mr. Beecher says (we italicize some 
phrases) : — 

" Upon the assembling of Congress [Dec, 1865] I went to Wash- 
ington. I found Southern iiie/i lying prostrate before Mr. Johnson, 
and appealing to his tender-heartedness,— for he is a man of 
kind and tender heart, — disarming his war-rage by utter submis- 
sion. I found Northerti men already uttering suspicions of his 
fidelity, and, conscious of power, threatening impeachment. The 
men who seemed alive to this danger were, unfortunately, not 
those who had the management of affairs. Bad counsels pre- 
vailed. The North denounced and the South sued : we see the con- 
sequences. 

" Long after I despaired of seeing the President and Congress 
harmonious, I felt it to be the duty of all good men to leave no 
influences untried to lessen the danger and to diminish the evils 
which are sure to come should the President, rebounding from 
the Republicans, be caught by those Northern men who were in 
sympathy and counsel with the South throughout the war. I 
shall not attempt to apportion blame where both sides erred. It 
is enough to say that unity secured at the seat of Government 
would be a noble achievement of leadership. 



POLITICAL CAREER. 113 

"Deeming the speedy admission of the Southern States as 
necessary to their own health, as indirectly the best policy for 
the freedmen, as peculiarly needful to the safety of our Govern- 
ment, which, for the sake of accomplishing a good end, incautious 
men are in danger of perverting, I favored, and do still favor, the 
election to Congress of Republicans who will seek the early admis- 
sion of the recusant States. Having urged it for a year past, I 
was more than ready to urge it agaifi upon the Representatives to 
Congress this fall. 

" In this spirit and for this end I drew up my Cleveland letter. 
I deem its views sound; I am not sorry that I wrote it. I regret 
the misapprehension which it has caused, and yet more any sor- 
row which it may have needlessly imposed upon dear friends. 
As I look back upon my course, / see no deviation from the 
straight line which I have jnade, without waver ittg, for now thirty 
years in public life, in favor of justice, liberty, and the elevation of 
the poor and ignorant." 

And to show how serenely he viewed the whole affair, 
while hundreds thought him ruined forever because he 
dared differ from the other opinion-shapers of the party 
and from the majority of his own friends, this paragraph 
is apt : — 

" The attempt to class me with men whose course I have opposed 
all my life long will utterly fail. / shall choose my own place, 
and shall not be moved from it. I have been from my youth a 
firm, unwavering, avowed, and active friend of all that were op- 
pressed. I have done nothing to forfeit that good name which I 
have earned. I am not going weakly to turn away from my settled 
convictions of the public weal for fear that bad men may praise 
me or good men blame. There is a serious difference of judgment 
between men as to the best polic3^ We must all remit to the 
future the decision of the question. Facts will soon judge us." 

In a private letter written by Mr. Beecher about the time 
of the foregoing controversy, recently published in the 
Christian Union in its report of a day of " Beecher reminis- 
cences" held this summer (1887) in Litchfield, Connecti- 
cut, appears the following: — 

"I desire that the constitutional amendments proposed should 
all be passed, except that of disfranchisement, which I think 
needless, as Congress has power to reject any who are sent from 
the South who are disloyal. To oblige the South to disfranchise 



114 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

their most trusted and honored men is an unnecessary humili- 
alion ; and to use the Constitution as a mere criminal law to 
punish men with, to foist into it provisions to meet a transient 
exigency, is to set a dangerous example and pervert our funda- 
mental law for no good end. ... I believe that the great 
body of the American people of the South, who are honest and 
have been misled, would have come back with a sense of gratitude 
for the leniency with which they had been treated. Now, they 
are in danger of feeling that they have been trodden down by 
their conquerors." 

In corroboration of this forecast read the words of the 
author of " A Fool's Errand " (written and published in 
1879), who certainly will never be charged with an undue 
partiality for Southern views, but who does show a remark- 
able power of understanding what he does not accept, and 
who speaks thus of the disfranchisement of the leaders: — 

" Among the peculiarities which marked the difference between 
Northern and Southern society was one so distinct and evident, 
one which had been so often illustrated in our political history, 
that it seems almost impossible that shrewd observers of that his- 
tory should for a moment have overlooked or underestimated it. 
This is the influence of family position, social rank, or political 
prominence. Leadership, in the sense of a blind, unquestioning 
following of a man, without his being the peculiar exponent of an 
idea, is a thing almost unknown at the North: at the South it 
is a power. Every family there has its clientelage, its followers, 
who rally to its lead as quickly, and with almost as unreasoning 
a faith, as the old Scottish clansmen, summoned by the burn- 
ing cross. . . . 

" It [disfranchisement] was a fatal mistake. The dead leader 
has always more followers than his living peer. Every hench- 
man of those lordlings at whom this blow was aimed felt it far 
more keenly than he would if it had lighted on his own cheek. 
The king of every village was dethroned; the magnate of every 
cross-roads was degraded. Henceforward, each and every one 
of their satellites was bound to eternal hostility toward these 
measures and to all that might result therefrom." . . . 

"Time went on; and, twelve years from the day when Lee 
surrendered under the apple tree at Appomattox, there was an- 
other surrender, and the last of the governments organized under 
the policy of reconstruction fell into the hands of those who had 
inaugurated and carried on war against the Nation, who had 



POLITICAL CAREER. 115 

openly opposed the theory of reconstruction, had persistently 
denied its legality or the binding nature of its promises, and had 
finally, with secret, organized violence, suppressed and neutral- 
ized the element on which it had depended for support." 

In brief, the political power given to the blacks over the 
heads of the whites resulted, first, in a chaos of misgovern- 
ment; then in a new rebellion which annihilated the blacks 
as a political element, and solidified the whites. When 
that had been effected, came peace; not instantly but grad- 
ually. The blacks, no longer feared, were at first tolerated, 
then their value as an inseparable element of the commu- 
nity began to tell, and by degrees the natural development 
of self-interest had its opportunity in solving the question 
of the common citizenship of the two races. 

Now, at the end of twenty years, we can appreciate how 
the processes which have latterly advanced so far in har- 
monizing the heterogeneous elements of Southern life (to 
quote Mr. Beecher's prophetic phrase, " occupation, new 
hopes, prosperous industries, education,") are at last hav- 
ing their normal effect: not perfectly, — for even the North 
is not yet in all respects perfect in the smooth working of 
its political, judicial, monetary, industrial, and varied cor- 
porate organisms! — but hopefully. 

Passing on, then, from this important phase of Mr. 
Beecher's public ministrations, we may rapidly review the 
next decade, during which the Congressional scheme of 
Reconstruction was doing its work, for good and evil, and 
Mr. Beecher retained his connection with the Republican 
party, and, with the lapse of confiict (for he never was an 
" irreconcilable," and despised controversy that had no prac- 
tical end in fair view), regained his influence in all directions. 
He had not, in the slightest degree, given any reason to 
think that he wished to go over to affiliation with the pro- 
slavery "Copperhead" Democracy of that time, but he 
had with might and main striven to hold the Republican 
party and the President together, and to carry out the 
restoration of the Union according to the spirit and plan of 
the lamented Lincoln and that which his own broad mind 
and generous heart told him was the simpler, safer, speed- 



Il6 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ter way — of consulting the facts of human nature. The 
effort had failed, by reason of strenuous wills attempered 
to war and incapable of sudden change to the sagacity of 
peaceful counsels. He quietly left the arena, and held his 
peace. He was not one who insisted that his way was the 
only way: he recognized the patriotism, and ability, and 
wisdom of the majority of his party's leaders, and, while he 
felt that they were taking the longest road, he loyally ac- 
cepted the route chosen and made the best of the good he 
found in it. In his church his influence had not been 
seriously shaken. His remarkable power of indignation 
and even invective, when roused by an infraction of the 
rights of others, was never used, or even suggested by 
any expression or phrase, when his own liberty of action 
was assailed. He had trained his people to independent 
thought and expression of opinion, and, while his sensibili- 
ties were undoubtedly hurt by many intemperate and 
harsh words from partisans during the heat of the contest, 
he spoke none himself, but with steady, sweet-tempered 
dignity kept his hold both on their respect and their love. 
And after the cloud had passed they felt a little ashamed, 
— not of their opinions, but of the way in which they had 
expressed them. 

The next of the "Patriotic Addresses" is a discourse 
on "National Unity,". preached in Plymouth Church, Nov. 
i8, 1869 (Thanksgiving Day). It is a large view of the 
possibilities of feuds and disintegration in our vast coun- 
try; discussing the disturbing influences, — immigration, 
religious sectarianism, long continued physical prosperity, 
and clashing of commercial interests between various sec- 
tions (especially Eastern and Western), and also the hope- 
ful elements, — intelligence (and its spread by religious 
discussion, books, and newspapers), the common-schools 
(and the need of keeping them free, and especially the 
growing necessity of making them unsectarian), and a sin- 
gle political agency, the constitutional Rights of the States 
(to secure wise local administration and maintain the 
dignity and power of National Sovereignty). It is a noble 
and most suggestive discourse, and in its discussion of un- 



POLITICAL CAREER. ii? 

sectarian common-schools, and of the rights of the States, 
shows a profound knowledge of the Constitution and of 
the true principles of our Federal government as inter- 
preted since then by the Supreme Court. 

In 1868 General Grant had been elected President, enter- 
ing upon his office in March, 1869, and in 1873 upon his 
second term. In both the political campaigns of Grant's 
election, Mr. Beecher took hearty interest and with helpful 
eifect. The nullification of the colored vote at the South 
resulted in the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 
proposed by Congress in 1869 and adopted by the States 
in March, 1870, providing that the right of suffrage should 
not be withheld from any citizen of the United States 
"on account of race, color, or previous condition of servi- 
tude." Political affairs at the South continued unsettled, 
but gradually quieted down as the whites regained ascen- 
dency. They seem to have passionately shut their eyes to 
all consideration of growth in industrial or commercial 
advancement, and to have retarded their own interests for 
ten or fifteen years to accomplish that one point. It is in- 
comprehensible to us of the North; yet so it stands. 

Meanwhile new dangers were threatening the country. 
The colossal development of moneyed interests during and 
since the war had bred an intense spirit not only of enter- 
prise but of speculation throughout the North. Railroad 
building and all forms of manufacturing and of com- 
merce were feverishly active. " Money " was plentiful, for 
paper-mills and the Government printing-presses turned 
out "greenbacks" bearing the name of the Dollar but 
passing for very much less than the golden reality. 
Congress, inflamed with the craze of the times, was in- 
clined to perpetuate this baseless monetary system, which 
had brought such "prosperity;" but Grant courageously 
vetoed the bill and gave some sensible counsel. In 1873 
the bubble burst, in an awful collapse of financial institu- 
tions all over the land; and the lesson was a severe one. 
In 1875 Congress patriotically and wisely passed the Re- 
sumption Act, to take effect Jan. i, 1879, by which the 
Government was to go back to specie payments. The day 



Il8 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

after Grant signed the bill the premium on gold began to 
diminish (/. e., greenbacks began to appreciate) and, with 
wise management by the United States Treasury, on the 
appointed day the premium had disappeared and the Gov- 
ernment's promises to pay were worth their face. This was 
not accomplished without agitation, discussion, wild theo- 
ries, passionate debate, and organized political resistance: 
and through it all Mr. Beecher gave his constant influence 
by pen and tongue in favor of sound currency, and sober 
restraint of the extravagances, public and private, engen- 
dered by the era of speculation. 

On Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 30, 1876, he made a "Cen- 
tennial Review" of the nation's life (page 772), with a 
philosophic consideration of the effects of the two great 
wars of our history — the Revolution and the Civil War, 
and especially the latter, on different portions of the coun- 
try; and he says: — 

" Instead of applying a rigorous ideal moral standard in form- 
ing a judgment, let us ask what was to have been expected of our 
people judged by the tendency of ordinary human nature in such 
conditions as existed at the end of this war. We shall then be 
able to judge whether this should be a fast day or a day of 
thanksgiving." 

He says some pretty severe things about both North 
and South, but his general conclusions are most hopeful. 
The special topic was the duty of good citizens in the midst 
of the exciting contested Presidential-election dispute be- 
tween the supporters of Hayes and of Tilden, the election 
having been held some weeks previously, and the cries of 
conflict over the result being then loud and furious. The 
Republicans charged the Democrats with frauds at the 
Southern polls, and the Democrats charged the Republi- 
cans with fraud in the Southern counting of votes: both 
claimed the election. 

Mr. Beecher firmly declared his belief in the Republican 
theory of this contest, but his counsel was for peaceful 
submission of the matter to the legal authorities and an 
Americanlike acceptance of the decision, whatever it 
mio-ht be. 



POLITICAL CAREER. 119 

His historical illustrations and precedents were exceed- 
ingly interesting, his patriotic confidence in American 
institutions was reassuring, and the lofty plane of political 
morality to which he raised the whole distressing and 
alarming contest was inspiring to the thousands who heard 
him and the tens of thousands who read his words. It was 
a valuable lesson in the principles of civil liberty. 

Among the interests that had leaped to enormous pros- 
perity and consequent power during the recent )'ears was 
that of silver mining. To such an extent had the output of 
that metal increased that it began to own States and legis- 
latures, and to send its representatives and senators to Con- 
gress. It was, properly, looked upon as an interest of great 
value to the land, but like every other one that by monop- 
oly gathered strength it swelled with selfishness and conceit. 
Silver was the great American product, and the rest of the 
land and all the nations of the earth must bow down before 
it. The insanity of attempting to satisfy the European 
capitalists, who had lent us gold on our bonds and enabled 
us to put through the war, by repaying them in our depre- 
ciated "greenbacks" had passed; and indeed, as the bonds 
were to be paid in "coin," could not have been seriously 
proposed to the world. But is not silver-money " coin " ? 
And is it not peculiarly our American coin ? So the bloated 
bondholders should be paid in silver, although the silver 
dollar could not be exchanged for the gold dollar, even in 
our own land. 

At the crisis when this specious dishonesty was advocated 
throughout the country, started by selfish monopolists 
but taken up by feather-brained theorists and managing 
politicians, Henry Ward Beecher's voice again rang out 
in warning. His sermon on " Past Perils and the Peril of 
To-day" (November 29, 1877) will be found at page 789, 
fitly exposing the dangers of this " suppressed repudia- 
tion." 

In 1878 occurred at Springfield, Massachusetts, the ninth 
annual reunion of the " Society of the Army of the Po- 
tomac," an association of officers banded together to keep 
green the memory of " the brave days of old," of gallant 



I20 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

comrades gone, of friendships fused in the heat of war and 
still sound and vibrant with the true ring; an organization 
that has never demeaned itself by descending from the 
plane of patriotism to that of "practical politics." Mr. 
Beecher was invited to address the Reunion, and his speech 
will be found at page 809. The value of the services of the 
army in the trying times of Rebellion gave him a natural 
point for passing to a consideration of the worth of mili- 
tary training, and the maintenance of military organizations 
and a regular army among a free people; and especially in 
this country, where the liberty of discussion is at times likely 
to degenerate into the violence of riotous reformers and dis- 
turbances of the social order. He spoke of the sources of 
danger in our rapidly increasing population, resources, and 
political power, the development of machinery, the growth 
of the means of transportation, the combinations of capital 
and enormous concentrations of individual and corporate 
wealth, the relations of money to politics and legislation, 
the beginnings of the socialistic movements among the 
working classes coincident with the extraordinary increase 
of power among the classes who employ them. These and 
other elements of the immediate future or, as he expressed 
it, " the next score of years," served as his themes of dis- 
course. 

Ten years have passed since he uttered the words, and 
the reader will find in them a prophetic portrait of our 
American social, financial, and political condition, as ac- 
curate as if made to-day. As General Hooker said, when 
he was called on for a speech, following it: — 

" That address was good enough to last a long time. Study its 
lessons, and digest them. I doubt if more home truths can be 
found in any discourse of the same length since the records of 
this country began." 

The next and last phase of Mr. Beecher's political activ- 
ity that demands our attention is the presidential cam- 
paign of 1884. That episode is too near, and its disputed 
points are still too much questioned, for any one to hope 
to make an impartial account of it which shall commend 
itself to partisan readers of either side as fair and candid. 



POLITICAL CAREER. 121 

Yet it must be attempted, in justice to the general theme; 
for, whether Mr. Beecher was wise or unwise in the part 
he took is aside from our proposition, — namely, that his 
career from begin/iing to end was guided by unselfish principle, 
and was consistently that of a lover of God and of man. 

Since the Reconstruction wrangle of 1865-6, eighteen 
years had passed — more than half the life of a generation. 
The administrations of Johnson, Grant (twice), Hayes, 
Garfield, and Arthur had successively entered into history. 
The Southern States were all represented in the National 
Congress, and, since the years of Ku-Klux and Bulldozer, 
had gone also those of the "tissue-ballot" and the skillful 
"count" which quietly but no less effectually maintained 
a nullification of the Reconstruction governments that had 
given the blacks the political control. The sight of their 
harmless voting had become little by little a familiar one, 
and no longer aroused the old-time horror and detestation; 
but, inevitably, intelligence ruled ignorance, and their votes 
gave them but little power. Yet it was a wholesome thing 
to have the rising generation at the South accustomed to 
the idea and the fact; it was preparing for the further 
changes that were to come. The whites were growing out 
of their unreasoning passion; the blacks were slowly train- 
ing for real citizenship. Their existence as men, and as 
free industrial and political factors, was little by little rec- 
ognized and acted upon. 

The philanthropic efforts of Northern givers and teach- 
ers were gradually regarded with less suspicion at the 
South, and the negroes began to be taught and to learn. 
The necessity for their labor on Southern lands grew not 
less but greater; and by degrees they were taking their 
places as fellow-laborers alongside of the whites — who had 
been forced to learn the bitter lesson, " he that will not 
work neither shall he eat." The leaven of industry was 
permeating the entire mass of social order at the South. 
A new generation was coming up, who had been reared 
not in luxury but in labor. Brains among the blacks were 
beginning to assert their power, and not only could there 
be seen white men and negroes working side by side in 



122 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

the fields or at bricklaying and carpentering and other 
trades, but colored bosses had charge of white or mixed 
groups of laborers, and colored contractors were making 
money and acquiring property. Common -school educa- 
tion was making headway for both races; and even such 
exceptional establishments as General Armstrong's Hamp- 
ton Institute, devoted to the training of negroes and In- 
dians, more and more won and received the kindly appre- 
ciation of the Southern people. In a word: the imposed 
political order having been successfully overthrown by the 
whites, roused to fury by the insult to their fetich of white 
supremacy, and their land "redeemed," they had subsided 
into the condition of ordinary human beings, and the play 
of normal elements and interests began to have its just 
effect. As the land grew quiet its splendid natural re- 
sources attracted enterprise and capital. Manufactures 
began to appear and grow; crops were more varied and 
valuable; the South began to take on new and hopeful 
conditions. 

Through all these years, however, politically, the whites 
had been almost solidly " Democratic," simply because 
the negroes and those who represented Reconstruction- 
ism were solidly "Republican." All other issues were 
"pooled" in that one. Of course it was not a healthful 
political condition, either for the Southern communities or 
for the nation at large; since, whatever other questions of 
public policy were before the people — as to tariff, cur- 
rency, bond-paying, taxation, foreign relations, or what 
not — all, even when mentioned in the party platforms, 
were nevertheless relegated to comparative obscurity. 
The main question at the South was how to defeat the 
Republican party, that had turned their communities bot- 
tom side up; and, at the North, how to maintain in power 
the Republican party, that had saved the Union, protected 
the Negro, and successfully reconstructed the Southern 
States. It was a double case of fetich. Each section 
honestly believed that the rule of the party it opposed 
meant the country's ruin. 

It was the less reasonable, on both sides, because the 



POLITICAL CAREER. 123 

Republican party of the Civil War had been largely com- 
posed of the loyal men from all shades and names of 
political partisanship — not only Whigs, but also " Union- 
ists " and "Americans," "Abolitionists" and " Free-Soil- 
ers," "Douglas Democrats" and "Democrats" out-and- 
out. After the war, multitudes of these men gradually 
dropped out of the lines of the Republican organization, as 
the issues that had united them were passed and settled, 
and divers side-bodies of partisanship took on various 
names as different topics — reconstruction, greenbackism, 
silver, tariff, with the administration of President Hayes a 
revival of the recurrent temperance reform, etc. — came one 
by one into view. The two main camps, however, remained 
"Republican" and "Democratic." The Republican leaders 
had been largely men of sound principles in financial morals 
and philanthropic statesmanship, and this fact had justly 
maintained their army of voters in a practical major- 
ity. Nevertheless, on other issues, the unanimity of the 
North was dividing; the successful party had necessarily 
attracted multitudes of shifty politicians " for revenue 
only;" and the opposition was increasing by defections of 
opinion. 

We have spoken of the changed industrial and educa- 
tional condition of the South ; and in several of Mr. 
Beecher's addresses, already mentioned, will be found to 
have been foreshadowed some new perils that lay before the 
North and the country at large. These perhaps may all 
be grouped under the general head of "the love of money," 
which in its daily seen effects certainly justifies the wisdom 
of the inspired writer who said that it was "a root of all 
evil." 

The enormous prosperity of the North under the un- 
natural stimulus of the war-fever did undoubtedly breed 
a " haste to be rich " that was visible in every one of the 
evils that had to be struggled against — the craze of paper 
money, the demand for repudiation, the debased silver 
currency, the oppressive inequities of the war-tariff main- 
tained through decades of peace, the swollen purse-power 
of corporations, the bribery and corruption of elections 



124 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

and legislatures and departmental administration. On 
every side was to be seen the immorality growing out of 
this change in the money-getting power of the times. 

Meantime, the great ship of state was forging ahead and 
coming into these new waters, vexed by strange winds and 
moved by currents unnoticed until they had grown potent 
to swerve the nation's course. 

One of the lines of political thought in which Mr. 
Beecher took a marked interest, although it is not repre- 
sented in this volume by any single address, was the ulti- 
mate ideal of the free exchange of natural and artificial 
products among nations; so that each one, although 
limited in certain directions of nature or of art, might be 
able, by trading for what it could produce, to get the bene- 
fit of the fertile soils and brains and well-trained hands of 
all the others. And, like many thinking men of the Re- 
publican party, he looked regretfully upon the fact that 
the abnormal taxes imposed upon imports during the war, 
for the expressed purpose of raising unusual revenues, 
were maintained, at first with apology, but growingly with 
bold justification and finally even with claim of merit, by 
the Republican leaders, as giving "protection to American 
labor" because taxing the entrance of foreign products, 
and thus tending to keep them out. 

But, aside from the general question of this excessive 
and oppressive tax, although connected with it, many of 
the Republicans sympathized in dreading a new trouble 
that had within a few years advanced with giant strides. 
They feared the demoralizing effect of the surplus revenue 
of $100,000,000 which every year piled up in the United 
States Treasury — a premium on fraudulent and extrava- 
gant attempts to get it "distributed to the people again." 
For, " the people " did not mean those who had unnec- 
essarily paid the tax, but the shrewd or favored ones 
who could invent ways of spending it, and furnish " chan- 
nels" which should retain much while distributing the rest. 

Star-route mail contracts, fraudulent pension claims by 
the thousands, payment of unearned railroad - building 
mileage -allowances, Indian supply contracts — big and 



POLITICAL CAREER. 1 25 

little, the leeches were attracted from every side to fatten 
on the Treasury surplus. 

The party in power was not altogether chargeable with 
this: it was inevitable that a so long-continued control of 
vast revenues should breed demoralization and corrup- 
tion in any party; both because the corrupt would seek 
it for their own ends, and because human nature is tempt- 
able. Men in power want to stay there; and they use the 
means at hand. It was only by a strenuous effort of re- 
form within the Republican party that this money-getting 
peril could be purged out of it. That was the danger to 
be fought. 

But there was another. The utilization of official station 
and influence for private purposes, instead of solely for 
public ends, had become a crying evil. The spoils-theory 
of office, which regards the places of public servants as 
the property of the party in power; which makes it the 
chief business of the higher officials to spend time and in- 
fluence in providing places for their partisans; which re- 
gards not fitness for the duties but efficiency in partisan 
politics as the qualification for public office, was prevalent. 
The salaries of officials thus favored by party leaders were 
taxed to furnish means for continuing those leaders in 
power; favoritism was seen to be advancing not only in 
executive but even in legislative cliques, making public 
laws for private profit in the sacred name of party, and by 
natural degradation stepping down even from that low 
plane to the still lower one of using the influence of offi- 
cial station for the personal pecuniary gain of the officers 
themselves. Thus the spoils-theory of office was inextrica- 
bly entangled, indeed, systematically reticulated, with the 
money-getting spirit of the time. 

These evils were broadly recognized in both parties by 
thinking men and moral teachers, but the chief illustrations 
in the Federal service were necessarily furnished by the 
party in power at Washington. Demoralization was not 
seen at Washington alone, it was wide-spread. As Mr. 
Beecher said in one of his sermons: "If you send a rogue 
to Albany to represent you, he does represent you." It was 



126 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

not confined to politics alone; embezzlements, defalcations, 
breaches of trust, showed an infection throughout the bus- 
iness world. Yet Federal politics offered the opportunity 
of dealing with the trouble in an organized form. The 
question arose: How can the wrong tendency be righted ? 
The "ins" naturally said, "It is a mere matter of position; 
if the 'outs' ever get in they will do the same." And thus 
there arose within the Republican party a strong movement 
to commit the party, by its declaration of principles and by 
the presidential candidate it should offer as its representa- 
tive, to a marked divergence from the recognized extremes 
towards which the current of the times, running in well- 
worn and insensibly deepening channels, had borne the 
responsible government. A reform of the tariff inequali- 
ties and infelicities, a reform of the theory and practice of 
the appointment to positions in the civil service: these 
were the two points that many Republicans hoped to see 
gained in the public commitments of the party. And they 
had the more hope, because in response to the demand of 
public opinion something had been begun. A committee, 
appointed by a Republican Congress, had publicl}^ examined 
the tariff by the aid of expert witnesses from all parts of 
the country, and had recommended a considerable reduc- 
tion of the import taxes. True, the Congress did not find 
it practicable to unite all interests sufficiently to efi'ect the 
committee's recommendation, but the public demand had 
been recognized and the reform might be brought about. 
The civil service movement was in like hopeful but doubt- 
ful condition. The reform had been so urgently demanded 
by public opinion that laws had been passed to compass 
that end; but practically the spirit of the law was not in 
favor among the influential leaders of the party in power; 
and the "outs" of course, as always, had the "ins" as their 
ever-present text of moral discourse. 

The Republican Convention of June, 1884, made fair 
enough promises on the critical points of public policy. 
The main thing, then, was the probability of reform as 
embodied in the Presidential candidate. Mr. James G. 
Blaine, the candidate named by the Convention, was not 



POLITICAL CAREER. 127 

accepted by those members of the party who had been 
publicly identified with the movements for reform as sat- 
isfactory to their convictions of what the party and the 
country needed. 

The Democratic party held its convention about a month 
later, in July; and while its platform, like the other, con- 
sisted largely in denunciations of the opposing party, its 
declarations on the subject of tariff reform and the civil 
service, honest mone)'', restrictions of the power of corpo- 
rations, etc., were much the same as those of the Repub- 
licans. Both parties in their declarations recognized the 
popular cry for reform, but both kept a wary eye on the 
influence of vested interests. 

So that the question in this case as in the other became 
a personal one: — Who and what will be their candidate? 
The man they nominated, Grover Cleveland, a reputable 
lawyer of Buffalo, New York, had won his way by a pecul- 
iarly honest and honorable and single-hearted devotion to 
his public duties, from the shrievalty of his county to the 
position of mayor of the city of Buffalo; and from that to 
the station of governor of the great State of New York. 
He was known as "the reform Governor;" as such he had 
been elected, and as such he had admirably filled the place. 
His creed and practice seemed to be summed up in his 
own felicitous phrase: "Public office is a public trust." 

Mr. Cleveland was accepted by his own party (although 
the worst elements of it, typified by Tammany Hall of 
New York, urgently opposed his nomination, and, as many 
believe, worked against his election); and his record made 
him acceptable to the Independent Republicans, who, not 
seeing present encouragement for reform within their 
party, stepped outside of it as their best hope. They 
believed that even a temporary loss of power would be 
better for the Republican party than the feared continu- 
ance in the discredited methods. 

Mr. Beecher was one of these. He was now an old man 
— seventy-one years of age; but his eye was undimmed 
(it is a curious fact that to the day of his death he never 
needed the aid of glasses, for private or public reading) and 



128 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

his natural force of eloquence, though ripened, mellowed, 
softened, was not abated. He went into the campaign, 
not in his old-time tremendous fashion, for the issues were 
not those of human slavery and the rights of man ; but at 
the same time he took his position unmistakably, and 
with power. 

The party fetich, however, was the most potent influ- 
ence evoked by the Republicans. The campaign was one 
of unparalleled personal bitterness and cruel vilification, 
which need not be recalled. This, with the childish dread 
of many, that, if the Republican party was thrown out of 
power, the country would fly to dismemberment, its indus- 
tries be sapped, its trade ruined, its commerce wrecked ; 
and that if the Democratic party should come in, the 
negroes would all be remanded to slavery, the rebel debt 
paid, the pensions to Union soldiers disallowed, free trade 
immediately inaugurated, and all the forces of the infernal 
regions incontinently set loose, did much to check the 
reform-within-the-party feeling that had resulted in the 
Independent Republican schism. 

Plymouth Church had never been trained by Mr. 
Beecher to accept him as pope. He had ruled there by 
the law of love; the authority conferred by his position he 
never exercised, but his influence was very powerful; his 
opinions were often combated by his parishioners, and he 
encouraged them to speak their minds. This had been one 
secret of the solidarity of that great membership of two 
thousand, in matters concerning him and his wishes. It 
was essentially a Congregational — that is, a democratic — 
community. On the question of breaking off, even tem- 
porarily and for any reason, from the Republican party, a 
large number of the members rebelled against Mr. Beecher's 
position, and when he took active part in the campaign 
were vehemently excited, opposing him not only in private 
but in public, and some even, as in 1866, with bitterness. 

Yet he, firm in the consciousness of right motives, 
stood strong in the conviction of his opinions. Knowing 
well that this great land was never made and would never 
be unmade by any political party; seeing the issues of the 



POLITICAL CAREER. 129 

day practically narrowed to that of a choice between two 
men — one of whom he believed to be the likelier to influ- 
ence a carrying out of the promises made by both parties; 
feeling that it would be more wholesome for the country 
at large, and even for the Republican party itself, to have a 
shifting of powers and responsibilities — a "change for the 
sake of change;" and, with it all, urgently desirous to see 
a closing of the old war-sores, and a chance for the recon- 
structed South to share freely in administering the govern- 
ment of a common country, and the introduction of new 
issues which should split up the voters of the South on 
some other lines than the old and irritating ones of 
"Rebels" and "Republicans," — he stood sturdily where he 
had placed himself. He made a few speeches, basing his 
arguments chiefly on the tendencies of the times and the 
comparative relations of the personal qualities of the can- 
didates to those tendencies ; and his influence was very 
great, especially among the young men of his own city 
and the business men of the great metropolis, who had for 
so many years seen him on the noble and manly side of 
every great controversy of the past. When it was all 
over, and the Republican party had lost the election, one 
of the most brilliant and effective Republican workers in 
Plymouth Church said: " It cut me to the soul that he 
was so wrong; but when it comes to denying his influ- 
ence, that is simply absurd. We never worked so hard in 
our lives as we did to counteract him in this thing; but 
the effect of his personality and his power was evident on 
every side." 

In November, 1884, on Thanksgiving Day, two weeks 
after the elections were closed, he preached in Ph^mouth 
Church a discourse entitled " Retrospect and Prospect " 
(page 825), taking, as was his custom for that- national 
festival, the land we live in, as his theme. 

The general discourse is a review of the growth of the 
land in the blessings of liberty; the war and its conse- 
quences are briefly touched upon, and then he generously 
commends the wisdom shown by the political leaders when 
the war was past and on the people was rolled the difficult 



130 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

duty of reconstructing, without experiment or precedent, 
the shattered fragments of the sixteen Southern States. 
The commendation is "generous," because it recognizes 
the value of a course which at the time he opposed in 
certain of its notable features. Among other things he 
says : — 

"The work was inherently difficult; and I think that while 
those to whose hands it was committed were not free from mis- 
takes, yet they have builded well ; and their names are part and 
parcel of American history. . . . There were great difficul- 
ties ; human nature would not be what human nature is if there 
had not been. There were many imprudent things done, North 
and South. Nevertheless, we have waited patiently and coura- 
geously until time should help; for time is God's minister of 
mercy. . . . 

" Then we have had patience given us, too, to redeem, on 
our side, the swollen values of the distempering war. We have 
had grace and conscience given us to redeem our finances and 
to bring back honestly within their bounds the issues of cur- 
rency, and have settled business on normal and solid founda- 
tions. . . . 

" But one thing more was needed, and that was to chase the 
scowl from the Southern brow ; to revive the old friendship; to 
clasp hands again in a vow of loving and patriotic zeal. It was 
given to us last, because it is the greatest of God's gifts. . . . 

" From the bottom of my soul, I believe in the honor and 
integrity of thoughtful Southern men ; and when I get from them 
such letters as I do, and hear from their lips such declarations as 
I hear, that they feel at last that they are in and of the Union, as 
much as we, and point to the flag, declaring, with tears, 'That is 
now my flag,' I believe it; I should be faithless to God and to 
providence if I did not. 

"Not the least joyful element in this reconciliation is the 
assured safety and benefit which will accrue to the colored race. 
That has come to pass which was their only safety. Just as 
soon as the Southern statesmen accept the perfect restoration of 
themselves to the great body politic, and find that there is no 
division as between Northern men and Southern men in any of 
the honors of government ; just as soon as they are in, and a 
part of every administration, as, thank God, they will be ; just so 
soon of necessity that will take place which is the salvation of 
the colored race. As long as they were a fringe upon a Northern 



POLITICAL CAREER. 131 

party, the South was condensed and solidified against it. As 
soon as they are divided at home between the administrational 
party and the opposition party, they will be guarded and taken 
care of. ... I regard this now, with schools and academies 
and various seminaries spread among them, as the final step of 
emancipation. 

" It is in these views, which have not been accepted with sym- 
pathy by some of the dearest friends I have, that I have acted 
[in the recent campaign] ; and in the calmest retrospect I now re- 
joice that I was able to act so. 

" The greatest mistake of my life has happened twice, as I have 
been informed. I propose this morning now to read a portion 
of the letters that were the first "greatest mistake of my life." 
That was immediately after the war, in the autumn of 1866. 

" I read it now that you may see how straight a line has run, 
from the very days of the war down to this hour, in my thought, 
philosophy, and action." 

Mr. Beecher then read portions of his two Cleveland 
letters of 1866, on the Reconstruction of the Southern States 
(page 736), showing his view that, not by imposition from 
without but only by the natural development of mutual 
and common interests between the two races — "the long 
result of time" — could white and black be brought to live 
and work harmoniously together. And he concluded 
thus: — 

" My dear friends, if I had written that for to-day I could not 
have written it better, and I do not think it needs to be written 
any better. . . . And I have read these letters, in parts, so 
far as bears more immediately on questions of to-day, that you 
may know that God gave me the light to do one of the best 
things I ever did when I wrote that letter ; and that he gave me 
the grace to stand on it, without turning back for one single mo- 
ment ; and that he has given me grace to lay my path, by sight, 
along those two letters — hindsight and foresight — from that day 
down to this ; and that he has given me grace to withstand the 
impleadings of those that I love dearly, not only of my immedi- 
ate household, but of my blood and kindred ; of those that are in 
the church, that are to me as my own life, and those that are of 
the political party with which I have labored thus far. 

" Still seeing that luminous light, as God reveals it to me, I 
have walked in it and toward it ; and abide in that same direction 
to-day; and, God helping me, so will I live to the end." 



132 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

Mr. Beecher's wisdom, in all the eventful passages of 
his life, will probably always find men of his own genera- 
tion to question it; because they thought, and doubtless still 
think, differently. But the clear-eyed honesty of his con- 
victions; the utter lack of self-consideration or ambition, 
or any unworthy motive; the broad consistency and gen- 
eral sagacity of his views, based on the laws of God as 
wrought out in human nature — whether displayed in per- 
sonal or social or political developments; and his single- 
ness of mind and devotion to his principles, — cannot be 
candidly denied or doubted. Those qualities were the 
source of his long-continued and extraordinary influence 
in the political life of his time. And there are multitudes 
who can now look back and see how history has justified 
him in withstanding the current political passions of his 
day — as to slavery, compromise, disunion, peace and war, 
the mutual relations of blacks and v.'hites at the South, 
repudiation and national credit, sound and debased cur- 
rency, the peaceful settlement of contested elections, and 
numberless other matters, wherein his counsel had always 
been freely given. He thought about everything in the 
light of God's truth and man's benefit, and withheld noth- 
ing of his thought, but courageously spoke it out and 
stood to it. 

How far he was right and how far wrong in his hopes 
and aims of 1884, to see the present perils of the land 
guarded against by a change, even if temporary, of the 
party in power and under responsibility, only the future 
can tell. We who are yet in the turmoil of the contest are 
too near to judge. He did live to see the substantial 
assurance of every other great principle that he had worked 
for; but the latest issue arose too near the end of his life. 
Yet experience had taught him patience; and patience, 
hope; and, although he died without the sight, his faith 
was strong in the self-cleansing and recuperative power of 
the American people, and in God's guiding hand. The 
contest over "Prohibition" is already dividing the colored 
vote in the far South between the two parties. As their 
manufacturing interests grow, the opposing cries of "Pro- 



POLITICAL CAREER. 133 

tection" and "Revenue Tariff" will bring in another split- 
ting wedge. And thus, in spite of remnants of barbarism 
like the "Glenn bill" of Georgia, making it a crime to edu- 
cate white and negro children together, and other evidences 
of the stubborn race-prejudice (which shows at the North 
as really as at the South), the great revolution is on the 
march, and will not go backward. His faith in that regard 
will be justified and his large wisdom will be recognized. 

The final address given in this volume is Mr. Beecher's 
" Eulogy of Grant " (page 840), which was delivered in 
Tremont Temple, Boston, October 22, 18S5, about two 
months after the death of that great man. It is dignified, 
strong, impressive, containing noble tributes to the hero 
and eloquently enforced lessons from the history in which 
he bore so large a part. 

In one of his addresses is a paragraph concerning Grant, 
which may well be placed here at the close of this imper- 
fect review of Mr. Beecher's political career, a fit summary 
of his own future memory on earth: — 

"As I recede, along the adjoining fields of Jersey, from the 
great city, I speedily lose sight of the masts, of the warehouses, 
and of the spires themselves; and yet, when I have gone so far 
that the last glimmer of these things is lost, the towers of the 
Brooklyn Bridge stand full and high in the air, conspicuous. As 
time goes on we shall forget that which called down such a storm 
of fury upon his name; and when all incidental and collateral 
things have gone below the horizon, his name and just fame will 
stand towering high in the air, unobscured and imperishable!" 



134 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



VI. 

STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 

One of the aptest things said about Mr. Beecher since 
his death occurs in an article published in the Cluistian 
Union, by Dr. R. W. Raymond, who had known him inti- 
mately for many years. Writing of his peculiar sincerity 
of character, Dr. Raymond says: — 

" Certainly, I never met another man who was so entirely the 
same in public and in private. . . . It is often said, by those 
who fancy themselves critics, that he was a great actor. In the 
most important sense this is not only not true, it is the exact op- 
posite of truth. He could not dissemble. He could not give 
force of expression to a feeling which was not with equal force 
dominant for the time within him." 

This trait is the complement of the one noted in our 
first chapter (page ii) as the chief element of the man's 
life — his sensitiveness to truth. To prevaricate, to give a 
shifty, double-sensed answer, was something that in forty 
years of acquaintance and twenty of close personal, lit- 
erary, and business association with him, as his publisher, 
I never knew him to do: nor do I believe it was possible 
for him.* He could be silent; no man more utterly so. 
And at times, when pursued by questions that he did not 
wish to answer, he would pass into silence, not only, but 
an impassibility of countenance that gave no more sign 
of understanding or of response than the face of the 
Sphinx. When he spoke at all, in public or in private, he 
spoke the truth, as it was given to him to see the truth. 



* In this chapter it will occasionally be simpler and more fitting for the 
writer to speak in his own person, as the material is, to some extent, in the 
nature of personal testimony. 






e^e^e^^^ju^ 



STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 135 

This was so characteristic that it could be seen through- 
out his life — in every element and phase. It is the ex- 
planation of many puzzling things. When Bismarck 
first appeared in European diplomacy, he baffled all the 
trained diplomats of the day by the simple device of 
speaking the truth, for they, never supposing that any 
man in power would plainly disclose his real intentions, 
calculated on the opposite, or on some variation, and 
deceived themselves. It is in much the same way that 
Henry Ward Beecher — not from shrewd forecast, but by 
natural impulse and determinate principle a truth-lover 
and truth-speaker — has been an enigma to many, who, see- 
ing a man pre-eminent in so many other directions, have 
judged his truthfulness, at times, not by his own sincere 
utterances, but by their observations of average humanity. 

And yet no one of them will say that he was otherwise 
on the level of ordinary men. They will recognize his 
greatness of intellect, of imagination, of heart, of physical 
power, and of that indefinable but very positive gift which 
they call eloquence, and which is a resultant of all the 
other gifts; yet so weak is their faith that they cannot 
conceive of a man having all this and the crowning graces 
of moral and spiritual steadfastness besides. What, how- 
ever, was the realm in which he lived and moved, and to 
which he devoted all his strength ? What was the one 
thing that underlay his every utterance ? It was the eleva- 
tion of human life above the physical and temporal, to the higher 
plane of the moral and spiritual ; and the testimony of many 
who knew his daily " walk and conversation," in matters 
both small and great, is that he was to a rare degree 
one who practiced what he preached. Except in certain 
noted matters wherein his own interests were deeply in- 
volved, his sincerity was never doubted; yet just there is 
where he should receive the benefit of "good character." 
For when to the aim of fifty years of effort, open and 
known to all men, is added the central, unmistakable char- 
acteristic of truthfulness, it stands to reason that the words 
of such a man are to be received as realities. 

In fact, his words were realities, to him, in a sense far 



136 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

more actual than most men can comiprehend. So instan- 
taneous and forcible were his processes of thought, so 
thorouo^h were his convictions, so vivid were the concep- 
tions of his mind and the analogies and similes with which 
his imagination flashed them upon the perception of his 
hearers, that they took place in him as experiences^ rather 
than as the mere results of intellection. When he was pre- 
paring for a public occasion he avoided any clear formula- 
tion of his material until the time was almost at hand, be- 
cause it was so difficult for him to follow a second time 
over a line of thought once taken. If I may repeat a por- 
tion of what I contributed to a chapter of Reminiscences 
in Abbott and Halliday's " Life " of him, a remark he made 
just previous to beginning his third series of " Yale Lect- 
ures on Preaching " will be apt, here. The series was to 
be on "Methods of Using Christian Doctrines," and the 
day before he was to go to New Haven I asked him: " Do 
you know pretty nearly the line of treatment )'ou mean 
to take ?" — for it was a difficult and critical task, and he 
dreaded it. 

** Yes; in a way," he answered. "I know what I am 
going to aim at, but of course I don't get down to any- 
thing specific. I brood it, and ponder it, and dream over 
it, and pick up information about one point and another, 
but if ever I think I see the plan opening up to me I don't 
dare to look at it or put it down on paper. If I once 
write a thing out, it is almost impossible for me to kindle 
up to it again. I never dare, nowadays, to write out a ser- 
mon during the week; that is sure to kill it. I have to 
think around and about it, get it generally ready, and then 
fuse it when the time comes." 

This every one knew who was familiar with the diffi- 
culty he always had in correcting for the press what 
he had spoken, when it had been reported and put in type; 
and even what he had written. The matter under revis- 
ion was no longer in process of making, to be perfected 
and corrected, but was a thing done, and had become an 
outside fact, simply suggestive of new ideas. The orig- 
inal production ran great risk of being overrun with new 



STRENGTH AiVD WEAKNESS. 137 

growth; every joint pushed forth a fresh bud of vital ex- 
pansion. Hence, he rarely undertook to see his speeches 
or lectures or sermons after their delivery, until they came 
to him printed and published. 

Nor was this the case with his public utterances alone. 
The thought tliat arose, if not suppressed altogether, was 
apt to find instant and forceful expression. He was quite 
as likely to burst out into splendid eloquence amid a small 
group of chatting friends, or even to a single listener, as 
before a vast audience, — not Macaulay-like, in artificial 
fireworks, but with the spontaneity and friendly glow of a 
great mass of cannel coal at the home fireside. 

He was moved by his own inner forces. One would as 
SQon suspect the Atlantic of holding back a particularly 
grand roll of surf at Long Branch until people should come 
down to see it, as to imagine Mr. Beecher " keeping " a 
fine thought or a striking figure till he had an audience. 
It was not that he despised careful preparation for public 
speech, since his whole life was a constant gathering, — a 
patient, painstaking, studious reading of books, and of 
men, individually and socially; a storing of his mind with 
multitudinous information and the results of other men's 
thought and discovery. But all this entered into his own 
mind and became an indivisible part of himself; and 
when, in talk or in conversation or in public speech, an 
idea came up for expression, it laid hold of him with 
power, as a real thing; and it was this, together with his 
natural gifts and cultivated modes of utterance, that made 
such strong impression on others. 

It is important to have this fact, of the native and habit- 
ual outspeaking sincerity of the man, thoroughly stated; 
for on it stands his life. And by way of emphasizing what 
I have called the "reality" of his thoughts, to himself, it will 
perhaps be worth while to claim and restate here another 
personal reminiscence, which I have several times seen in 
print, although I never put it there. 

It was at the close of one of his patriotic Thanksgiving 
Day sermons that, after raising his hearers with him to a 
noble elevation of thought and sentiment, he closed with 



138 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

an apostrophe to Liberty, whose radiant face and form he 
described in dazzling eloquence. A day or two later I 
chanced to be where he was, in a family circle, and as he 
was weary he had thrown himself down on the sofa. We 
were speaking of a report of the sermon in one of the 
papers: "But," said he, "how stupid of the reporter to 
make that a diamond-j'///^Mv/ scepter ! It was a diamond 
scepter — one flashing crystal." 

" Now, Mr. Beecher, that's not likely. Whoever knew of 
such a thing? Besides, the phonographer probably wrote 
just what he heard, and it is my recollection that you said 
' diamond-studded.' " 

With one bound he was on his feet. " I don't know 
what I said, but I know what I saw." And then with ear- 
nestness and increasing intensity as he was rekindled by 
the remembrance, which seemed to have been an unusually 
vivid one, he went on and told how it came about, what 
had been the foregoing thought, and how, suddenly, the 
vision shone upon him, and what it was. From that time 
I never doubted that he did actually see — that his imagina- 
tion did really " body forth " — the forms of things unknown, 
and of known things not present to the bodily eye. 

There is another such reminiscence, — not so poetical 
or striking as to the vision, but perhaps even more to the 
point under discussion. 

In another of his sermons on Thanksgiving Day Mr. 
Beecher was describing an imaginary interview between a 
ship-owner of kindly Christian feeling and an old sailor 
on one of his ships in port, which the merchant had 
gone to look at. He indicated the superior's frank and 
friendly way of speaking, and then the old sailor raised 
himself slowly up from his work to reply. Mr. Beecher 
never used tobacco; I doubt if he ever tasted it; but, 
in the person of the old sailor, he rolled his tongue 
around in his cheek, put up his hand, and, to clear his 
mouth for talking, unmistakably made the movement 
of taking out of it a large cud, and went on with his 
reply. The conversation proceeded for perhaps a min- 
ute. Mr. Beecher's right hand meanwhile had dropped 



STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 139 

to his side, but it was closed, as if holding something. 
When finally he spoke of the merchant pleasantly offering 
his right hand to say good-by, the sailor's closed right hand 
furtively threw away something behind hi/n, 7vas wiped off on 
the back of his trousers, and then held out to receive the gen- 
tleman's farewell. I had watched the hand, believing that 
the orator all the while unconsciously felt the " moist un- 
pleasant body " of the sailor's cud, and was proportion- 
ately amused to see him throw it away and wipe his hand 
sailor-fashion before taking the other's proffered palm. The 
experience was a reality to the man who was describing it. 

When I afterwards asked Mr. Beecher about it he was 
immensely tickled with the comicality of the thing, but had 
no recollection of the minor details at all. What he was 
after was the illustration of his subject; the special mode 
of doing it was something he gave no thought to. And, 
indeed, the action was so quiet and unnoticeable that it 
could not have been an intentional part of the picture, and 
I doubt if it was seen by the audience at all. 

But, it may be objected, this is not moral sincerity. No; 
yet it shows the native temper and habit of the mind, 
which has much to do with moral developments of every 
kind. And that tendency, to speak the things that were 
himself, may be found — nay, it is one of the most obvious 
qualities noticeable — in all his multifarious teachings. Says 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes: — * 

" The way a man handles his egoisms is a test of his mastery 
over an audience or a class of readers. What we want to know 
about the person who is to counsel or lead us is, just what he is, 
and nobody can tell us so well as he himself. . . . Mr. Beecher 
has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be per- 
fectly sound, in bodily, mental, and moral structure; and his 
self-revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed im- 
personality which is a common trick with cunning speakers who 
never forget their own interests. Thus it is that wherever Mr. 
Beecher goes, everybody feels, after he has addressed them once 
or twice, that they know him well, almost as if they had always 
known him ; and there is not a man in the land who has such a 
multitude who look upon him as their brother." 

* " The Minister Plenipotentiary," page 422. 



I40 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

In the " Beecher-Memorial " volume, compiled and pub- 
lished by Mr. Edward W. Bok, among other interesting 
contemporary tributes to Mr. Beecher's qualities, is one 
from Dr. William A. Hammond. Referring to Mr. Beech- 
er's speech at the dinner given to Herbert Spencer when 
in New York, he says: — 

" I shall never forget the effect which his ringing words pro- 
duced upon an audience, composed as it was, of hard-headed men 
who were not accustomed to be swayed by their emotions. They 
rose to their feet, waved their table-napkins, and shouted them- 
selves hoarse, not because they all approved the views which he 
then revealed to them, but because of the astounding courage, 
the wonderful regard for the truth as he understood it, and the 
almost superhuman honesty by which he must have been act- 
uated." 

It was this very sincerity of self-revelation, and the 
further fact that there was a self worthy to be revealed, 
that was his strength. To quote Dr. Storrs again: "His 
power has been so constant and so vast only because the 
sources of it have been so manifold and so deep." 

This same outspeaking fashion of his, however, was also 
a source of weakness, in that it sometimes led him into 
headlong leaps of feeling and overstrenuous or inaccurate 
statements. In his address to the New York and Brooklyn 
Association of Ministers and Churches, October ir, 1882, 
when he resigned his connection with that body in order 
that neither the Association nor any of its members should 
feel oppressed by the sense of any responsibility for his 
religious teachings, he said: — 

" I have my own peculiar temperament ; I have my own method 
of preaching : and my method and temperament necessitate 
errors. I am not worthy to be related in the hundred-thou- 
sandth degree to those more happy men who never make a mis- 
take in the pulpit. I make a great many. I am impetuous. I 
am intense at times on subjects that deeply move me. I feel as 
though all the ocean were not strong enough to be the power 
behind my words, nor all the thunders in the heavens ; and it is 
of necessity that such a nature should at times give such intensity ■ 
to parts of doctrine as to exaggerate them when you come to 
bring them into connection with a more rounded and balanced 



STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 141 

view. I know it. I know it as well as you do. I would not do 
this if I could help it; but there are times when it is not I that is 
talking ; when I am caught up and carried away so that I know 
not whether I am in the body or out of the body; when I think 
things in the pulpit that I could never think in the study, and 
when .1 have feelings that are so far different from any that be- 
long to the lower or normal condition that I can neither regulate 
them nor understand them. I see things, and I hear sounds, and 
seem, if not in the seventh heaven, yet in a condition that leads 
me to apprehend what Paul said, — that he heard things which it 
was not possible for a man to utter. 

" I am acting under such a temperament as that. I have got to 
use it, or not preach at all. I know very well I do not give crys- 
talline nor thoroughly guarded views. There is often an error on 
this side and on that ; but I cannot stop to correct them. . . . 
The average and general influence of a man's teaching will be 
more mighty than any single misconception, or misapprehension 
through misconception. 

The Association urould seem to have agreed with that 
final assertion, for after the long and full statement of his 
beliefs and teachings, which he proceeded to make, they 
passed without a dissenting voice a resolution, recognizing 
his magnanimity in wishing to relieve his fellows in the 
Association of even apparent responsibility, but declaring 
that his exposition of doctrinal views "indicates the pro- 
priety of his continued membership in this or any other 
Congregational Association," requesting him to withdraw 
his resignation, and finally saying: — 

" We desire to place on record, as the result of a long and 
intimate acquaintance with Mr. Beecher, a familiar observation of 
the results of his life, as well as his preaching and pastoral work, 
that we cherish for him an ever-growing personal attachment as 
a brother beloved and a deepening sense of his worth as a Chris- 
tian minister." 

Our point here, however, is that whether in public 
or in private, whether in quiet moods, or under the stimu- 
lus of a keen interest, or on the sweep and swing of a 
mighty wave of feeling, he was always natural, always 
himself, always giving forth his own interior condition, 
honestly and frankly; and those who knew him longest 
came by experience to know the truthfulness of his words. 



142 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

This is especially noticeable in his letters, whether to 
friends, acquaintances, or strangers. With a strong sense 
upon him of an unwillingness to read manuscript and an 
impatience of pen-work, he was nevertheless a voluminous 
correspondent, and wrote innumerable letters, notes, scraps 
of memoranda, questions, answers, instructions, — every 
conceivable size and style of epistolary communication to 
all sorts and conditions of men. A collection of his letters 
would be a mountain of ore-veins, with many a bonanza- 
chimney of pure precious metal; sense and trifling non- 
sense, fun and broad-based wisdom, affectionate and poetic 
sentiment, tender sympathy in trouble, the noblest spirit- 
uality — the man himself. Mr. Joseph Howard, Jr., in his 
graphic and characteristic " Life" of Mr. Beecher, says: — 

"Years hence, when the ultimate biographer and collector shall 
have received from all sources, at home and abroad, the multitu- 
dinous trifles which go to make the comprehensive whole, far 
from the least of these illustrations of the greatness and goodness, 
the weakness and the uniqueness of Mr. Beecher's character will 
be found in letters, sent here and there, dashed off with the 
rapidity of friendly utterance, or penned with care and thought 
as to their effect. . . . Elsewhere in this volume will be found 
letters written during a period of forty years to his most intimate 
friends. . . . They are packed with sentiment. They give 
evidence of his extraordinary and peculiar vocabulary, and are 
brightly garlanded with choice illustrations drawn from the 
heav^ens, from the earth, from the verdure-clad fields, from the 
golden granaries of the West, from the heart of society, from the 
progress of art and science, from everything which human nature 
teaches, showing that it was his constar habit so to think and 
so to write. . . . His letters are no more like those written 
by ordinary men than he was like ordinary men." 

The circle that furnished the letters to which Mr. How- 
ard alludes could doubtless furnish many more, and so 
could every group of heart-friends that in his long and 
loving life Mr. Beecher drew to himself; so, too, could 
lawyers, statesmen, politicians, business associates, ecclesi- 
astical friends (and opponents), editors, young men that 
he helped, strangers who addressed him, — there was no 
limit to the varieties of humanity to whom he wrote, for 



STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 143 

one reason and another. And the " infinite riches" of his 
nature could be gathered from these writings quite as 
effectively, if not as completely, as from his public minis- 
trations. They are all characteristically frank; and while 
naturally his exuberant sentiment and affection found most 
outplay towards his nearest friends, many a distant corre- 
spondent has been surprised and delighted to get so much 
more of the man himself in a felicitous mood than had 
been hoped, when addressing him. 

In tracing the trait of sincerity in Mr. Beecher's charac- 
ter, there is one point more that requires mention: his 
trustfulness in friendship. In his " Eulogy of Grant," the 
orator says: — 

" Such was his loyalty to friendship that it must be set down 
as a fault — a fault rarely found among public men." 

This remark may be applied to Mr. Beecher himself, — 
except that the evils flowing from his loyal belief in friends 
never led him into errors of principle whereby the interests 
of the public suffered. He himself took the chief injury. 
It is true, there were occasions when his confidence in the 
disinterestedness and judgment of some friends resulted 
in unjust conclusions bearing upon others; but they were 
candid mistakes, amid complicated currents, at times when 
he felt the need of experienced and unbiased counsel and 
believed that he had found it. When an idea took posses- 
sion of him he held it tenaciously, and in the face of oppo- 
sition would sometimes forward it with tremendous force 
(under pressure of that human faculty which he himself 
has happily describ 'd somewhere as a "conceited con- 
science"). Yet he was not a stubborn man; and when 
fairly convinced of error he was no laggard in acknowl- 
edging it. A patent fact in his career was that in the 
realm of personal friendship his powerful affection for 
others — and especially for any whom he could help — drew 
him into confidence in the sincere love for him of those 
whom he loved. The honest strength of his own feeling 
sometimes blurred his sight, when the feelings of others 
towards him were to be discriminated. It sprang from 
his own open and sincere nature. The special instances 



144 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

of this trait which plunged him into the deep and awful 
trouble of his life need no specification here. They are 
but too well known. 

It presents an anomaly; yet the fact stands: Mr. 
Beecher's knowledge and intuitions of human nature as. 
shown in his published works would seem to be almost un- 
rivaled, since the day of the master-dramatist who stands 
above comparison; while yet his judgment in the cases of 
actual persons was at times egregiously wrong. 

His remarkable knowledge of man's nature was based on 
incessant observation and study of men's actions and mo- 
tives, the results of which were shot through with the light 
of his marvelous imagination and warmed into life by his 
human sympathy, enabling him to vitally realize what must 
be the consciousness of others — to think their thoughts, 
and feel their sensations, and be moved by their emotions. 
But there was a force in him greater than knowledge, 
loftier than imagination, more potent than generic human 
sympathy: it was the constant outreaching of an affec- 
tionate heart for personal friendship. Freely he received, 
throughout his life; for who could resist or ignore the 
friendliness of so rich, so noble a nature ? And, as he re- 
ceived, so and much more freely did he give, bounteously, 
unreservedly. Nothing pleased him so much as the power 
to please or serve a friend,^unless it was a chance to do a 
good turn for an enemy. 

Yet it is not to be supposed that he gave his friendship 
without just cause. Among the thousands who felt his per- 
sonal influence and who bore to him an enduring personal 
affection, the members of Plymouth Church showed that 
their friendship was of the lasting kind, while of those who 
at one time and another became intimate with him, the 
element of constancy was lacking in but a pitiful few. 
The roll would be seen to contain many noble and honored 
names, with others quite as worthy if less known. He was 
attracted by beautiful and generous qualities, and instinct- 
ively repelled by low and mean ones. Of the two false 
friends who raised the cloud of suspicion that cast so black 
a shadow on his life, one had been a youth of noble promise 



• STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. MS 

who had grown to maturity under his fostering kindness 
and loving care, and who in early manhood showed many 
winning and admirable qualities; while the other, frank and 
attractive in demeanor, intelligent and interesting in con- 
versation, came to him in an hour of desperation, professing 
indeed to be moved by loyalty to his opponent, but winning 
his confidence by free protestations of belief in him, and 
offers to undertake the generous office of "mutual friend." 
Complaint has been made concerning Mr. Beecher, that 
he had the "royal trait" of accepting not only homage but 
service and sacrifice, as no more than his due, and that he 
was negligent of homely obligations. This is true; but it 
is only half the truth. A man of many and important 
functions, he was under large responsibilities, which needed 
both service and sacrifice from many helpers. In the great 
Congregational Council of February, 1876, — the largest in 
the history of the denomination, — which assembled to con- 
sider (and resulted in practically sustaining) the propriety 
of the rules and practice of the disciplinary polity of Plym- 
outh Church, the fact was brought out that the member- 
ship of that church was something over two thousand 
five hundred; and that when the whole church work was 
considered, its parish of families, its own immense Sunday- 
school, its Bethel and Mayflower Mission schools, etc., it 
was seen to be the center of from 12,000 to 15,000 persons, 
looking to it for instruction, for consolation, for moral di- 
rection. That would be enough for almost any man to 
carry on his soul. Yet Mr. Beecher's duties, as a sort of 
central heart to supply and circulate spiritual life-blood, 
were not limited by these thousands, although their needs 
were the nearest and the most conscious. There were 
demands upon him from every side — his neighborhood, 
his city, his friends, various literary and business enter- 
prises, political questions and questioners, public lect- 
ures in all parts of the land, and other things that will 
suggest themselves to those who knew his life; not to 
mention the army of the poor, the sick, the afiflicted, the 
unfortunate, the importunate, the inconsiderate, the asi- 
nine, with all of whom and of which his patience was tire- 



146 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

less and his activity endless,, for good. True, as he once 
said to a hostile audience delaying him in his speech, "We 
have all the time there is;" but even that did not suffice 
for the calls upon him; he had to work largely through 
others. And as all who worked with him and under him 
felt his inspiration, they gladly gave him service and sac- 
rifice; and he, unconsciously, but most naturally and cor- 
rectly, identifying himself with his work, did doubtless 
accept this as no more than his due. 

There were times when this went too far; when — espe- 
cially under the influence of others who, more facile than 
he in the special matters under consideration, changed the 
relative focus of things in his sight — he failed to appre- 
ciate the position and just rights of some of these co- 
laborers with him. Yet as one who knew much of his way 
for many years, I wish to record my belief — arrived at not 
by impulse or through mere personal affection — that he 
was never consciously unjust, but that on the contrary he 
would far rather suffer than inflict injury. During twenty 
years of intimate work with him, while there were often 
passages of perplexity and even severe trials of the rela- 
tions between us, I never received from him one impatient 
or unkind word. And not only so, but I think it safe to 
say that during all those years I never heard from him an 
irritable or harsh expression about other people (except in 
that playful extravagance which robbed it of its sting), 
even concerning those who were most unfaithful and ven- 
omous toward him. 

He was not perfect; and he would have been the first to 
laugh at such a claim for him. His intentness on one 
thing would often cause him to forget another thing which 
people were justly expecting; he was unmethodical, and 
hard to work with because he could not be counted upon 
as a sure element a.t the time needed; his modes of work 
increasingly depended upon his moods of spirit and of 
body; he moved over so large a field and was a part of so 
many groups and interests and movements that some of 
them at times suffered sorely: yet, he did his best. Per- 
haps he undertook too much. 



STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. I47 

His weak point was always his sympathetic nature as 
regarded persons. His courage never failed, except when 
it was necessary to do something that would displease or 
grieve or afflict a friend; and then he was cowardly — there 
is no other word for it. Sometimes in church affairs, some- 
times in business matters, a certain line of action would 
be decided on in consultation which would displace or 
disappoint some one for whom he had a strong af- 
fection, even perhaps on whom he had especially leaned; 
and if it was arranged that he should convey the decis- 
ion to the knowledge of the party interested, he would 
postpone it, avoid it from day to day — until at length 
the crisis was at hand, and he either left the circumstance 
to make itself known, or took refuge from the personal 
complication in a stern setting forth of the necessities 
that had compelled the decision. That this was a kind of 
moral cowardice, no candid friend of his can deny. In 
several instances it resulted in the keenest distress and in- 
dignation on the part of the friend whom he could not 
bear to wound, but who was, even thereby, the more 
sorely bruised. 

It was somewhat the same in cases of bereavement, 
although less so because he was not in any way responsi- 
ble for the personal suffering. He would shrink like a 
girl from announcing to a friend the death of a dear one; 
yet, even in the most painful circumstances, when the duty 
was brought before him of comforting the afflicted at the 
time of burial, he quietly and strongly grasped the situa- 
tion, and the power of his uplifting spirit was wonderful. 
Perhaps it was because the very publicity of such occasions 
divested them somewhat of the personal element, and 
brought them upon that ideal or generic plane of human 
nature, which was so familiar to his ken, and his subtle 
sympathy with which, on the other hand, made individ- 
uals so responsive to his touch. 

There certainly seems to have been some such un- 
derlying cause for the coupling of his almost unfailing 
knowledge, wisdom, and courage, when things were to 
be considered on the broad ground of general principles. 



148 HENRY WARD B EEC HER. 

with his occasional lack of poise and correct character- 
reading where individual friends were concerned. The 
latter, however, although a marked defect, was at worst a 
weakness, not a vice. It arose from his excess of what in 
due proportion is a very noble quality — that of personal 
sympathy; a quality which gave tone and color to his 
entire life, which led him into nearly all his troubles, but 
which on the other hand was the element of that outspeak- 
ing self which, as Dr. Holmes says, drew such multitudes 
to " look upon him as their brother." To him as a man 
may be applied his own description of his preaching: " Not 
crystalline [symmetrical] nor thoroughly guarded; " with 
"often an error on this side and on that;" but his "aver- 
age and general influence will be more mighty than any 
single misconception," — and that certainly was upon a 
high plane of being, and in the direction of the purest 
and noblest aspirations. 

These characteristics of Mr. Beecher have been here 
brought together in order to be utilized with some other 
facts, which have never to my knowledge been so grouped 
before, in considering briefly the one great trouble of his 
life, which for some years markedly diminished his general 
public influence, although the richness and power of his 
spiritual ministrations in his church were during that 
period as markedly increased. 

It was one of the difficulties inseparable from his person 
and place that whatever related to him had to go into the 
newspapers. He experienced the extreme of good and the 
uttermost of evil that newspaper discussion can effect. 
The slime of whispered scandal that his especial enemies 
trailed about for some years reached the editors of all the 
chief journals, but they had the manliness to let it alone. 
The ecclesiastical discussions which arose when Tilton, and 
afterward Mrs. Moulton, were " dropped from the roll " of 
Plymouth Church, were fruitful occasions of partisanship 
and prejudgment; and when Tilton published his final ac- 
cusations (swollen, by repetitions and accretions^ from 
impropriety to hideous crime) the positions of the parties 
involved made newspaper discussion inevitable. The men 



STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 149 

of Mr. Beecher's own profession, moved variously by 
friendship and loyal trust in a man of hitherto spotless 
life and reputation, and on the other hand by " envy, 
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness " in theologic dif- 
ferences and personal jealousies, took sides, and made 
another unusual element; while politics, religion, and 
every other line along which he had made himself felt, 
furnished friends or foes according to individual expe- 
riences of his help or his hindrance in their former 
doings. In short, the simple question of Henry Ward 
Beecher's personal innocence or guilt of what was charged 
against him had no fair field for settlement. 

His church — a body of men and women who certainly 
had the keenest interest possible in knowing the true 
character of the man under whose influence they and their 
children were living, and containing a multitude who had 
never hesitated to oppose him and, if they could, to vote him 
down in church affairs when they did not agree with him — 
investigated the matter through a committee of men hon- 
ored and trusted by the whole membership, and cleared him. 

When at last the matter was brought into a court of 
justice by a suit against him for $100,000 "damages," it 
received as full and exhaustive an exposition as ten law- 
yers, and a judge who gave them free range to collect and 
bring in all possible testimony, could accomplish in a six 
months' trial. The result was a disagreement of the jury, 
three members of which voted finally against Mr. Beecher, 
and nine (comprising all who were men of Christian belief) 
for him. Without discussing the surmised or asserted rea- 
sons for this disagreement, it is enough to say, that the ver- 
dict of the majority, agreeing as it did with the opinion of 
those who best knew the man, was subsequently confirmed 
by experts in evidence whose opinions are now accessible. 

The oldest and probably the most influential clergyman 
among the Congregationalists of Great Britain is Rev. 
Henry AUon, D.D., pastor of the Union Chapel, Islington, 
London, and for many years editor of the British Quarterly 
Revinv. His church and congregation are very large, 
comprising more persons of eminent intelligence, position, 



150 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

wealth, and effectiveness in the community than any other 
of the denomination, while their works of Christian charity 
and systematic help among the poor of London offer proof 
of their Christian orthodoxy. Dr. Allon is not an emotion- 
al man, like his friend and Mr. Beecher's friend, Dr. Joseph 
Parker, the great preacher of the City Temple; he is rather 
of the more exact, intellectual type, a man of scholarly cult- 
ure, a preacher and writer of polished vigor, of a forcible 
yet chastened eloquence. For years before they had met, 
Dr. Allon had been a reader and admirer of Mr. Beecher's 
sermons (which, by the way, have been published in The 
Christian World of London, one every week, since January, 
1861, without a single omission, to the present time, and 
still continue). In 1863 the men met, and from that time a 
firm friendship had bound them. When in 1869 the first 
volume of the "Plymouth Pulpit" sermons was issued in 
book-form. Dr. Allon spoke of them as follows: — 

"These corrected sermons of perhaps the greatest of living 
preachers — a man whose heart is as warm and catholic as his 
abilities are great — combine fidelity and scriptural truth, great 
power, glorious imagination, fervid rhetoric, and vigorous reason- 
ing, with intense human sympathy and robust common-sense." 

When this trouble arose Dr. Allon was, naturally, in- 
tensely moved; and, while believing loyally in the character 
of his accused friend, was like many others puzzled by the 
days of silence and by the complications of the whole affair. 

When finally the civil trial came on. Dr. Allon called to 
him several of his most trusted parishioners, some of them 
eminent in the profession of the law, and agreed with them 
that he and they should, each by himself, read scrupu- 
lously every part of the case as it proceeded — speeches, 
testimony, documents, summings up, charges, all — and get 
as accurate a knowledge of the whole as professional 
weighers of evidence could who did not see and hear the 
witnesses. When it was concluded, and the muddled jury 
rendered no verdict, this "struck jury" of experts came 
together and, without discussion, gave their individual 
ballots; the result being unanimous in the opinion that 
there was no evidence to sustain the charge of the plaintiff. 



STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS. 151. 

But again: the editor of the Laiv Journal (Albany, N.Y.) 
is Mr. John D. Parsons. In an article on Mr. Beecher's 
death in the issue of March 19, 1887, after referring to Mr. 
Beecher's " excessive impulsiveness and guilelessness," 
Vifhich he regarded as " the secret of the great scandal," 
he says: — 

" We recorded our convictions about this unhappy affair at the 
time, and should not now refer to it except to repeat the opinion 
of the leading counsel for the plaintiff [Tilton], the late William 
A. Beach. Mr. Beach was predisposed to believe Beecher guilty, 
but after the trial he declared in our hearing that he believed him 
innocent, and that his appearance and utterance when he asserted 
his innocence on the witness-stand were the most sublime and 
overpowering exhibition of the majesty of human nature that he 
ever beheld. He could not understand how any one could resist 
that solemn avowal. ' I felt, and feel now,' said he, ' that we were 
a pack of hounds trying in vain to drag down a noble lion.' " 

In the issue of April 30th, referring to some question that 
had been raised as to the correctness of his memory of Mr. 
Beach's remarkable statement, Mr. Parsons says: — 

" The remarks which we quoted were addressed by Mr. Beach 
to the Hon. Martin I. Townsend and ourselves, and we see in an 
' interview ' with Mr. Townsend, published in a Troy newspaper, 
that he confirms our recollection of Mr. Beach's assertion that he 
believed Mr. Beecher innocent. Mr. Beach said other things 
which rendered it impossible that we should be mistaken as to 
his opinion. Mr. Beach, Mr. Townsend, and ourselves were old 
acquaintances, fellow-townsmen, near neighbors, and practiced at 
the Troy bar together for many years. . . . We do not see 
that Mr. Beach's 'integrity' is in the least involved. He simply 
went on after Mr. Beecher's testimony, and made the best he 
could of a poor case, and even his greatest admirers admitted that 
his argument was weak, half-hearted, and unequal to his reputa- 
tion." 

And later in the same issue he adds: — 

" Since writing the above we have seen the Troy Times of 
April 25th, which, in speaking of our report of Mr. Beach's opin- 
ion, says : ' It finds confirmation and support from acquaintances 
of the late Mr. Beach in this locality. A resident of Lansing- 
burgh says : " Mr. Beach had old friends and companions here. 
He declared to them his belief in the innocence of Beecher. He 



152 HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 

said to one of them : ' I had not been four days in the trial before 
I was confident that he was innocent.' And he adhered years 
after the trial to the opinion. It seems that it is worth while to 
record the fact that Beach said so, freely and positively, as I am 
told by one of the men to-day."' A correspondent also writes 
from Lansingburgh to the Times in the same issue : ' It is a fact 
that Mr. Beach, in the frankness of his intimacy with gentlemen 
in this village, stated that he formed, and then, when he spoke, 
long after the trial, held the opinion that Mr. Beecher was an in- 
nocent man, and that the trial of Tiltoii v. Beecher established that 
conviction in his viind.' " 

A verdict in favor of the defendant, from the leading 
counsel of the plaintiff, contrary to his original belief 
when he entered the case, and established by the trial it- 
self, ought to be enough to satisfy any really reasonable 
mind. 

If more were needed, it might be found in the subse- 
quent friendliness of most of the others of the plaintiff's 
counsel shown for the defendant in after years; and espe- 
cially by the fact that Chief Justice Neilson, who presided 
at the trial and had formerly not known Mr. Beecher, was 
ever after his fast friend. And when, in the Brooklyn 
Academy of Music (in 1883, eight years after the trial), 
the fellow-citizens of the venerable clergyman assembled 
to celebrate his seventieth birthday with testimonials of 
respect and affection such as no other man has ever re- 
ceived from them, Justice Neilson presided at the open- 
ing of the meeting. 

It is true that many hold themselves in doubt concern- 
ing this sad yet triumphant passage in Mr. Beecher's life, 
although they have never done what all the above-men- 
tioned experts did, and conscientiously made themselves 
masters of all the facts and testimony bearing upon it. 
They content themselves by saying, " Upon that question 
the tribunal of history may render a clearer judgment than 
this generation has reached." Happy those — and in this 
case the multitude is increasing — who do not need a forty 
years' pilgrimage through the wilderness of collateral 
prejudice to find the straight and simple path out of this 
mystery! 



STREXGriJ AA'D WEAKNESS. 153 

The characteristics of Henry Ward Beecher which form 
the theme of this chapter are an inseparable part of his 
political career, as that was a natural outgrowth and es- 
sential portion of his whole life. The very elements that 
gave his intellectual qualities such a unique power in 
the church and the world — his love of truth, his sincerity, 
his frank self-revelation, his sympathy, his remarkable 
emotive force — were what led him into the shadow of his 
great trouble, but, inspired by his singular realization of 
the indwelling of the spirit of God in the soul of man, they 
also led him through the darkness into the light beyond. 
No one can comprehend the fact that he was sustained un- 
der that crushing weight for years', and steadily, cheer- 
fully,* and with power continued his work, showing more 
of the wealth of his great nature than ever before, who 
does not accept the idea that he was a pure-souled, Chris- 
tian man, who loved his kind and absolutely trusted 
the God he professed to serve. No other theory will 
account for it. His sermons from 1873 to 1876 are the 
richest and strongest that he ever preached. It was in 
1872-3-4, in the most trying time of the trouble, that he 
was invited to give three courses of "Lectures on Preach- 
ing " at the Divinity School of Yale College, in the 
" Lyman Beecher Lectureship " founded by his friend 
Henry W. Sage; and those three series of lectures, on the 
" Personal Elements," " Social and Religious Machinery," 
and "Christian Doctrines," stand as perhaps the most 
valuable of all his contributions to the education and in- 
spiration of his time. 

His general popularity at that period of course suffered 
a severe reversion. His books, his paper, his public lectures, 
were not wanted, and business troubles were added to his 
burden — a burden the heavier for him, that others had to 
suffer in consequence. There was but little wanting to his 
pain; yet the love of loyal friends and his unfaltering trust 
in a Father God were enough to keep his mind serene and 
his spirit sweet and steadfast in kindness. 

In 1876 he began public lecturing again. Major J. B. 
Pond, who was his companion on all his lecturing tours 



154 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

from that time, says in the preface to " A Summer in 
England with Henry Ward Beecher": — 

" Excepting only Arizona and New Mexico, there was not a 
State or Territory in the Union in which we had not traveled to- 
gether. In sunshine and in storm ; by night, by day, by every 
conceivable mode of travel ; on steamboats and rowboats ; by 
stage, and on the backs of mules, I had journeyed at his side. I 
was near him in the days of 1876-8, the time of his deepest sor- 
row, when he was reviled and spit upon ; I saw the majestic 
courage with which he passed through gaping crowds at railroad 
stations, and at the entrances of hotels and public halls, — a cour- 
age which I had not conceived mere humanity could possess. . . . 

" Especially during those three darkest years was he the sub- 
ject of my sad admiration. Often have I seen him on our enter- 
ing a strange town hooted at by the swarming crowd, and greeted 
with indecent salutations. On such occasions he would pass on, 
seemingly unmoved, to his hotel, and remain there until the hour 
for his public appearance ; then, confronted by great throngs, he 
would lift up his voice, always for humanity and godliness. . . 
, . . . And when he had spoken, the assemblages would 
linger to draw near to and greet the man whom they had so 
lately despised. How changed I have often seen the public atti- 
tude toward him when he left a town into which he had come 
but the day before ! . . . 

" I thank God that it was my privilege to attend his fortunes 
to the end, and to see and hear on both sides of the continent, 
and on both sides of the ocean, demonstrations of love and con- 
fidence that came at length in so unsullied and vast a stream, 
from the church, his friends, his country, and his race, toward 
him who had brought so many thousands of them so much 
nearer than they had been to the common Master of us all." 

Several of the discourses in this volume, of 1876, 1877, 
and 1878, show how he again laid hold on public questions; 
and as the years went by his great power was gradually 
re-confirmed, — those who oftenest saw and heard him 
being his staunchest supporters. 

And thus, little by little, slowly but steadily, his sun 
rose once more, through the clouds and mists, until it 
rode high in the heavens, shining with a full and noble 
effulgence. 



CONCLUSION. 155 



VII. 

CONCLUSION. 

Henry Ward Beecher was so large a personality, so 
multifarious a nature, that hundreds of writers have not 
only since his death but also during his life attempted to 
depict him, without accomplishing more than showing, 
each one, the phase that he himself had been able to appre- 
ciate. The pictures are mostly truthful, but all are partial. 
Fortunately, the theme of these chapters is not the man 
but only a single line of his activity, and we are dispensed 
from even the attempt to present a complete view. 

It is true, in trying to find some of the more potent fac- 
tors in his political life and influence, we have been obliged 
to consider his principal native qualities and the condi- 
tions of their growth and cultivation; because his political 
activity was not an artificial addition to his regular labors, 
but a spontaneous outgrowth of himself, and an integral 
part of his life-work. It illustrates the man. When one 
comprehends his acts and motives there, it is easier to see 
the unity and beauty of his entire life. His enthusiastic and 
unwavering love for God and for man gave him an access 
to spiritual forces and to an answering sympathy from 
men's hearts, that kept his power upon them vital to the 
last. His keen perception and industry and assimilative 
capacity provided an endless store of knowledge; and 
when, drawing from this " things new and old," he rea- 
soned with men, and illumined good sense with the bright- 
ness of wit, with poetic attractiveness, and with the enno- 
bling beauty of the moral and the spiritual, his hearers 
had confidence in his wisdom. 



156 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

This was to be seen wherever he appeared, and espe- 
cially among men of his own profession, who, however 
much they may have assumed him to be deficient in 
their peculiar modes of reasoning, never failed to look up 
to him for inspiration or be glad to get his help when his 
powerful personality was present. A distinguished au- 
thority has spoken of seeing him " in councils and deliber- 
ative assemblies where, when the business became intricate 
and entangled, and things were greatly mixed, there came 
in his clear, incisive sagacity, his persuasive eloquence, 
and his resolute will, and pulled things straight with mar- 
velous suddenness." 

His inborn honesty and candor were evident in his im- 
pulsive habit. Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D., in an article in 
his paper, the Christian Union, makes a statement the truth 
and aptitude of which are so striking that I wish to cite it, 
and bear personal witness to its correctness. It refers to 
the goodness as one source of the greatness of Mr. 
Beecher: — 

" He was a great preacher because he was a great and good 
man. He was pure as a pure woman ; simple as a little child ; 
frank to a fault. His most intimate friends never heard from his 
lips a suggestion of a salacious jest ; I never knew the man bold 
enough to venture on one in his presence. He was incapable of 
deceit or artifice. He could conceal, when concealment was nec- 
essary, only by maintaining an absolutely impenetrable reserve. 
The charges of duplicity and falsehood which a foul conspiracy 
brought against him some years ago, were to all who knew him 
as intellectually absurd as they were morally monstrous." 

This native and habitual sincerity, and his sturdy inde- 
pendence of opinion, strengthening him to stand always 
foremost among the battlers of right against wrong — even 
when his personal affiliations and sympathies acted to 
deter him from differences with those whom he loved — 
gained and kept for him the respect of mankind. His very 
opponents — unless small-souled enough to be utterly 
blinded by passion, either of personal or partisan preju- 
dice — conceded to him a remarkable honesty in opinion 
and in action. And in those characteristics — faith, knowl- 



• CONCLUSION. 157 

edge, sagacity, sincerity, and independence — lay the rea- 
sons for his influence upon the political life of this nation, 
an influence unparalleled and unequaled by that of any 
other unofficial American citizen in the history of the land. 
When the length of his career is considered, and the 
breadth of it — whether as to the number of individuals 
affected or the variety of interests involved — his life will 
be seen to have been an inseparable and mighty element 
in that of the nation. 

Dr. W. S. Searle, for many years Mr. Beecher's physician, 
writes in an article in the North American Review: " His- 
tory records no man who outranked his fellows in more 
directions, and to a greater extent, and who fell below the 
average in fewer elements and developments of mind and 
soul." That is certainly a truthful, unexaggerated state- 
ment, put in a for.m not easy to deny. And while it finds 
illustration in every portion of Mr. Beecher's life, it stands 
especially substantiated in his political career. His public 
life, represented only by a few salient points in these 
thirty-two " Patriotic Addresses," covered actively a full 
half-century. What other name stands for so prolonged, 
so full, so steady a power; for so few mistakes and so 
many notable successes; for such unvaried pressure on the 
side of moral right, of spiritual elevation, of a loyal trust 
in God and a generous trust of man ? 

His influence on the religious life of his generation was 
of course greater than his political power, because it was to 
the former especially that he devoted himself, even while la- 
boring in politics, reform, or the lighter realm of literary en- 
tertainment. This can be here only alluded to. In 1869 a 
newspaper noticing an early volume of '' Plymouth Pulpit " 
asserted that his influence on religious thought was greater 
than that of all the theological seminaries put together. 
This friendly exaggeration, however, contained a truth; 
his teachings permeated the atmosphere and were felt 
wherever young men, earnest to think and to learn, were 
studying religious problems. Mr. George S. Merriam, in 
the Christian Union, in an article of Beecher reminis- 
cences of the time when Mr. Merriam was Mr. Beech- 



158 HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

er's managing editor of that paper, apropos of an allusion 
to Plato, says: "While not naming him, of course, with 
Plato for originality, he was essentially of Plato's type in 
his interpretation of the universe by a lofty impassioned 
idealism; and the serene light of the Athenian sage kindled 
in the Christian preacher into a warmer and tenderer 
glow." This, however, is complemented by another trait 
no less influential, which perhaps is best set forth in a pas- 
sage from one of Mr. Beecher's own sermons, entitled 
" Fact and Fancy: " — 

" It has been said that everybody is either a Platonist or an 
Aristotelian — Plato standing for ideal philosophy and Aristotle 
for the real and practical. Everybody tends, it is said, to follow 
one or the other. No ; the perfect man unites them both, and is 
at once Aristotelian and Platonist. His feet standing on solid 
fact, his head goes philosophizing, and his he^rt keeps the balance 
between them." 

Dr. Abbott, again, noting the departure of the present 
time towards a less formal and a more practical and eth- 
ical religion than formerly, says that "in this great move- 
ment Mr. Beecher has been the leader. His relation to it 
is acknowledged of all men." " He has rendered his 
generation many and great services — moral, political, so- 
cial, theological; but his greatest service is in this, that 
he has taught the Puritan Church that God is love." 

His sermons and lecture-room talks have been for more 
than twenty-five years published and widely read in En- 
gland, and many a man high in ecclesiastical honors there, 
as well as numberless students and young clergymen who 
loved and followed his teachings, have expressed their 
gratitude to him for the light he has shed on their path. 
Dr. Howson, the Dean of Chester, and joint author with 
Conybeare of the scholarly and famous " Life of St. Paul," 
came to Plymouth Church to see the man and hear the 
voice whose printed words had been so much to him. He 
went home with Mr. Beecher, and they had a delightful 
time together; and on his return to England he sent one 
of his own books in return for one Mr. Beecher had given 
him, inscribed, " For gold I give thee brass." 



CONCLUSION. 159 

Dr. Joseph Parker, the eloquent London preacher, his 
unswerving friend for twenty-three years, writes: — 

" As a preacher I believe the whole pulpit of the world would 
give him the palm. When Charles Kingsley heard him he sat and 
wept like a child through the whole discourse, and when it was 
concluded he said : ' Mr. Beecher has said the very things I have 
been trying to say ever since I entered the Christian pulpit.' 
The Dean of Canterbury said to Mr. Beecher himself: 'There is 
one thing, Mr. Beecher, for which we must all thank you, and 
that is for what you have taught us respecting the Fatherhood of 
God.' When he went [in 1886] through England and Scotland he 
was hailed on every side by ministers who bore the most grateful 
testimony to the happy influence which his ministry had exer- 
cised upon their spiritual life." 

And this kind of evidence could be multiplied indefi- 
nitely. If he was through all those long years thus influ- 
encing the teachers of religion, and opening to their souls 
an entrance into the " lofty and impassioned idealism " in 
which his own spirit so largely dwelt, how incalculable 
his influence upon the millions who hear and read the 
teachings of these thousands of instructors ! Truly he 
was a mighty man; and the marvel is that his might was 
so unselfishly exercised for the right. 

In his last notable contribution to religious teaching — 
his sermons on " Evolution and Religion " — he simply gave 
deliberate utterance to a line of thought which he had been 
following, at first vaguely, afterwards with more clearness 
and certainty, for many years. In his preface he says: — 

"The universal physical fact of evolution, which a widely ac- 
cepted philosophy of our day postulates as a theory of the Divine 
method of creation, is one which so naturally and simply fits 
many a puzzling lock, that it is gratefully seized by many who 
seem to themselves to have been shut out from hope and from 
the truth. 

" For myself, while finding no need of changing my idea of the 
Divine personality because of new light upon His mode of work- 
ing, I have hailed the Evolutionary philosophy with joy. . . . 
And that it will furnish — nay, is already bringing — to the aid of 
religious truth as set forth in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ 
a new and powerful aid, fully in line with other marked develop- 
ments of God's providence in this His world, I fervently believe." 



l6o HENRY WARD BE EC HER. 

In a private letter (1885) he writes: " It is the fruit of 
my life's thinking, and has come not from books but from 
the life of my own soul." It was a vital and helpful belief 
to him; and, whatever may be its fate as a basis of men's 
religious conceptions, he used it with power to help and 
vitalize the dying faith of many a man who received it with 
gratitude, and made it possible for many a preacher and 
teacher to read the signs of the times in scientific thought 
— not as a hindrance, but as a new inspiration, in the in- 
terpretation of God's revelation in his word and in his 
works. 

Of the addresses in this volume it is not too much to say 
that they constitute a glowing picture of the times that 
gave them birth. Their statements, often violently disputed 
when first set forth, have hardened into accepted truth; and 
their matter and style — for terseness, clearness of reason- 
ing, aptitude of illustration, keenness of wit, power of ap- 
peal, and all the elements of effective eloquence — will 
stand among the most enduring monuments of the orator's 
genius. 

In many a passage his words now stand as prophecy ful- 
filled. 

Lincoln, Grant, and Beecher are generally acknowledged 
to have been the three greatest men developed by the co- 
lossal contests of their era. Yet it is worthy of note, that 
both the civil hero and the military hero of the War owed 
their high eminence largely to the vast power of a Nation, 
entrusted to their able hands in official responsibility, 
while the power exerted by Henry Ward Beecher was sim- 
ply that of his own individuality. His great church, his 
extensive effect upon the religious thought and teaching of 
his time, his wide journalistic influence, his popularity as 
a lecturer, his general acceptability as the man to voice the 
public feeling on all sorts of occasions, his political influ- 
ence at home, his triumphant changing of the course of a 
stubborn nation abroad, his eminence in so many spheres 
of activity during so long a life, — these all grew out of the 
magnificent forces of the man himself. 



CONCLUSIOX. i6i 

And the man himself, therefore, is what the present 
volume, in spite of its limited scope, will help to show. 
Descriptions and biographies of him are but partial 
side - lights. Real knowledge of him can be had only 
from his own utterances, where the living flame of his 
genius burns imperishably. He held no office; he bore 
no professional label ; he wore no sectarian badge or 
party collar; he was neither President, nor General, nor 
Doctor of Divinity; but above all rank, beyond all title, 
stands and will stand, the unadorned, yet unforgotten 
name of Henry Ward Beecher. 



These preliminary pages are concluded, with a clear 
sense of their imperfections, but in the hope that they 
may aid the reader of the following " Addresses " to 
appreciate the noble consistency of the life whose power 
men hold in wonder and admiration. 

John R. Howard. 



PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 



FREEDOM AND SLAVERY 




^^. 



/ 



SHALL WE COMPROMISE? 



Mr. Clay's Compromise has been violently resisted by 
the South, and but coldly looked upon in the North. 

It is not that both sides are infatuated and refuse a rea- 
sonable settlement. But the skill of Mr. Clay has evidently 
not touched the seat of disease. He either has not per- 
ceived, or has not thought it expedient to meet the real 
issue now before the people of the United States. The 
struggle going on is a struggle whose depths lie in the 
organization of society, in the North and South respect- 
ively; whose causes were planted in the Constitution. 
There are two incompatible and mutually destructive prin- 
ciples wrought together in the government of this land. 
Hitherto, like Esau and Jacob, they have striven together 
in the womb. Now they are born, and that feud has begun 
which shall drive the one or the other to the wilderness. 
To attempt to settle a radical opposition of polity, by 
easing off the rub here and there, leaving the great princi- 
ples in full vigor, is as if one should hang fenders and sand- 
bags along the side of hostile ships that come crushing 
together, instead of putting the helm about and going 
another tack. " Slavery is right," and " Slavery is wrong " ; 
" Slavery shall live," " Slavery shall die" ; " Slavery shall 
extend," " Slavery shall not extend" ; — are these conflicts 
to be settled by any mode of parceling out certain terri- 
tories ? Now the battle rages at one point. By and by it 
will rage at another. These oppugnant elements. Slavery 
and Liberty, inherent in our political system, animating our 
Constitution, checkering our public policy, breeding in 

*From T^e Independent, Feb. 21, 1850. This article was read to John C. 
Calhoun, then on his death-bed. " Who writes that ? " he asked. The name 
was given him. " That man understands the thing. He has gone to the 
bottom of it. He will be heard from again." 



1 68 ■ PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Statesmen opposite principles of government, and making 
our whole wisdom of public legislation on many of the great- 
est questions cross-eyed and contradictory, these elements 
are seeking each other's life. One or the other must die. 

We give Mr. Clay sincere praise for desiring peace. We 
think it worthy of his reputation, to have declared that he 
would never vote for the extension of Slavery. If his 
compromise had taken that determination as its starting 
point, he would then have come nearer to our ideas of the 
leader which our times and our difficulties demand. It is 
no sportive joust upon which our nation is gazing. The 
shield of the challenger hangs out for no blunted lance. 
Like Ivanhoe, we should have been glad had Mr. Clay 
struck the shield of Du Bois Gilbert with the sharp lance- 
head, importing earnest battle. One straightforward speech 
against the extension of Slavery, based, not upon political 
reasons, but on the great principles of humanity and 
justice; one glowing appeal to the whole nation to take the 
stand, which he has personally taken, never to vote for the 
extension of Slavery on either side of a?iy line; this would have 
been a noble statesmanship, and crowned the last years of the 
revered sage of Ashland with the brightest glory of his life ! 

Let no man suppose that the contentions which now 
agitate the land have sprung from the rash procedure of a 
few men — the hot-heads either of the North or of the 
South. We are in the midst of a collision not of men, but 
of principles and political institutions. The inevitable 
course of affairs has been developing the results for which 
provision was made, first in the organization of society, 
and then in the structure of the Constitution. No harvest 
ever answered more closely to the husbandman's seed, than 
do our difficulties to the original sowing. 

The North, adopting the theory of democracy, organized 
all her civil and industrial institutions upon that basis. 
Every man, the lowest, the least, the highest and best, had 
one common platform of rights. The South, adopting the 
theory of aristocracy, made two platforms — the one for the 
governed, the other for the governors. The one and the 
other began at once to exhibit their results. In the North, 



SHALL WE COMPROMISE? 169 

labor was voluntary, honorable, and universal; in the 
South it was compulsory, and made disreputable by being 
fastened upon an abject class. Of course the laborer had 
different values. In the North, he was a citizen, capable of 
any honor, framing his own laws, making his own rulers, 
and so an integral element of the State. In the South, he 
neither voted nor determined; he had no rights; he was 
a slave. Labor and Laborers are the foundations of a 
community. The strength, the virtue, the civilization of 
a community must be measured by the condition of its 
laborers, and not by the polish on its surface. 

The whole structure of society conformed to these re- 
spective foundations. 

The North put honor upon its laborers; they were 
trained in common schools; they became reading and re- 
flecting men; shrewdness, penetration, forecast, personal 
independence, fertile resource, marked the industrial classes. 
Grow as rapidly as the educated and the wealthy might, 
the distance between them and the laborer constantly 
diminished. There never was a time when the bottom of 
society was so near the top as now. 

The South, making labor a disgraceful necessity, deny- 
ing it education, compelling it not by those motives which 
are ordained healthfully to develop the man, but by the 
overseer's eye and lash, and educating only her wealthy 
sons, has steadily widened the distance between the top 
and bottom of society. Nothing can be more dissimilar 
than the tone and sentiment of societies so diversely 
formed. Liberty is a universal right — it belongs to 7)ien, 
on the one side; it is a privilege, and belongs to a class, on 
the other side. The North binds society together, identi- 
fies its interests, equalizes and kneads it, causing it to grow 
alike throughout, and makes it strong by the strength of 
its individuals, and gives to individuals the advantage of 
commonweal. There cannot be a commonwealth of Slavery. 
It is class-weal and class-wealth. The South hopelessly 
divides society; puts her honors on one side of the cleft, 
her menial ofifices on the other. The North compacts and 
the South stratifies. To educate the laborer is to do the 



K 



lyo PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

whole State a benefit, in the North; to educate the laborer 
is to strike at the foundations of society in the South. We 
send educators to the Governor's chair and to Congress. 
They of the South send them to the penitentiary and the 
gibbet. 

Now, does any man doubt that here are the real, vital, 
distinguishing elements of two radically different govern- 
ments — an Aristocracy and a Democracy ? Does any one 
believe it possible that these respective tendencies should 
be confined, in the respective fields, to civil affairs ? Will 
they not determine the family institution, the usages of so- 
ciety, public opinion, yea, the whole and very nature of 
communities ? Can the agriculture of slaves and slavery 
and the agriculture of freemen be the same ? Can the 
commercial interests be the same ? the political economy 
and the politics? Can statesmen bred in such schools have 
common sympathies ? That the North and South have 
many wants and many sympathies in common, is as true as 
that all men, the most opposite, oppressor and oppressed, 
deceiver and dupe, have great wants in common. But in 
their foundation-ideas, their political doctrines, their State 
policies, their conceptions of public measures, they are not 
only different, but, for the most part, opposite and oppug- 
nant. States so essentially different would find harmony 
rather in separate existence than in federation. , Yet our 
Union is composed of these oppositions. 

When the Constitution was in birth, these things were 
in the seed. Yet, even then, the repellencies were such 
that a common Constitution was adopted only by com- 
promise. Now if the compromises of the Constitution in 
the matter of Slavery were adopted in the expectation that 
slavery would soon be eradicated by the superior vitality 
of Liberty, we can understand the wisdom of the inten- 
tion at least. But if it was designed that one instrument 
should inclose the spirit of two theories of government so 
totally adverse, it was the most extraordinary blindness, 
the most anomalous folly which honest men were ever 
smitten with. We should as soon look for an agreement 
by which Christ and Belial should jointly undertake to 



SHALL IVE COMPROMISE? 171 

govern this world ! Was it thought possible to serve both 
Liberty and Slavery — God and Mammon ? Could the 
same mouth breathe justice and injustice? Could a Con- 
stitution having any definite nature have two hearts, one 
beating for liberty with vitalized blood, and the other 
beating for slavery with black blood ? Could it organize 
courts empowered to establish justice and systematic op- 
pression ? — courts, with one hand to lift up the wronged 
by speedy redress, and to beat down the wronged with the 
other by triple blows ? We believe that the compromises 
of the Constitution looked to the destruction of Slavery 
and not to its establishment. 

The event justified the judgment. Although incidental 
causes conspired to give slavery a new growth, while our 
country was swelling and coming into manhood, yet it 
soon became apparent that both systems could not long 
coexist. 

There are good and easy souls, not perturbed by over 
deep meditations, who think that men make all this na- 
tional uproar. They are guiltless of supposing that our 
institutions are the agitators, that our civil polity is the 
fanatic whose firebrands inflame the Union. This move- 
ment of the spirit of the age has made the men, not the 
men it. We are its children. While the North and the 
South inveigh against each other, and fanatics are loud- 
mouthed against fanatics, calmer and deeper men see that 
both North and South are drifting, and fighting as they 
drift, in a current whose secret springs lie deeper than 
men's volitions; whose force God hath ordained and will 
augment, until old things are passed away, and He whose 
right it is shall reign. Why then should we try to stop 
the contest ? It must come to an issue, which spirit shall 
animate our Constitution. The spirit of Bondage and the 
spirit of Liberty, when both are living spirits, cannot dwell 
together. Moses' rod must swallow the enchanter's, or 
the magician's rod must swallow the prophet's. The 
South have found out that Slavery cannot live and stand 
still. Liberty grows the fastest; has the best roots; eats 
out the other: and if slavery is stationary it will be 



172 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

speedily overrun and smothered by the rampant vine of 
freedom. It must thrust out its roots; it must borrow 
vigor from fresh soil. Southern men are perfectly consist- 
ent in rejecting a compromise which only confirms old 
rights, but positively grants no extension. 

The South now demands room and right for extension. 
She asks the North to be a partner. For every Free State 
she demands one State for Slavery. One dark orb must 
be swung into its orbit to groan and travail in pain, for 
every new orb of liberty over which the morning stars 
shall sing for joy. 

On that question we hold there can be no Compromise. 
The Constitution has come to a period of final construc- 
tion. Every year's delay will aggravate the difficulties; an 
earlier day had been better than this; but this is better 
than any future day. It is time for good men and true to 
gird up their loins and stand forth for God and for Hu- 
manity. No Compromises can help us which dodge the 
question; certainly none which settle it for Slavery. We 
are told that the question is momentous and beset with the 
most serious difficulties. Neither in the affairs of individuals 
nor of nations is there any difficulty when men are willing 
to do right. It is when Right is spun to so fine a thread 
that it floats like a gossamer, changing to every breath, 
that we lose sight of it or find it entangled in our hands. 
There never was a plainer question for the North. It is 
her duty openly, firmly, and forever to refuse to Slavery 
another inch of territory, and to see that it never gets any 
by fraud. It is her duty to refuse her hand or countenance 
to Slavery where it now exists. It is her duty to declare 
that she will under no considerations be a party to any 
further inhumanity and injustice. Then the path will be 
plain and straight. The path of Duty, though a steep 
one, and often toilsome, is always straight and plain. 
Those are the labyrinthine roads, which, winding through 
sloughs and thickets or imbosked and dark, seek to find a 
way around the rocks and steeps, and to come to the gate 
of Success without climbing thehill of Difficulty. 

Mr. Clay's compromise resolutions demand better pro- 



* SHALL WE COMPROMLSE? 173 

vision for the recovery of fugitive slaves; and a bill is now 
pending in the United States Senate for this purpose. Wei 
cannot strongly enough express our profound regret at the) 
remarks which Mr. Clay felt it his duty to make on thi^l 
subject. On this matter, our feelings are so strong that^ 
we confess a liability to intemperance of expression. 

If the compromises of the Constitution include requisi- 
tions which violate Humanity, I will not be bound by 
them. Not even the Constitution shall make me unjust.^ 
If my patriotic sires confederated in my behalf that I; 
should maintain that instrument, so I will, to the utmost 1 
bounds of Right. But who, with power which even God , 
denies to himself, shall by compact foreordain me to the ! 
commission of inhumanity and injustice ? I disown the act. ' 
I repudiate the obligation. Never while I have breath 
will I help any official miscreant in his base errand of re- 
capturing a fellow man for bondage. And may my foot 
palsy, and my right hand forget her cunning, if I ever be- I 
come so untrue to mercy and to religion as not, by all the 
means in my power, to give aid and succor to every man 
whose courageous flight tells me that he is worthy of lib- 
erty. If asked, what then becomes of the Constitution, I 
reply by asking what becomes of God's Constitution of 
Humanity, if you give back a slave to the remorseless maw 
of servitude ? I put Constitution against Constitution — 
God's against man's. Where they agree they are doubly 
sacred. Where they differ my reply to all questioners, 
but especially to all timid Christian scruples, is in the lan- 
guage of Peter: " Whether it be right, in the sight of God, 
to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." 

Ought not Christians, by all the means in their power, 
to preserve the Union ? Yes, by all means that are right. 
But, dear as the Union is, and ought to be, whenever it 
comes between a Christian people and their Christian integ- 
rity it becomes a snare. The very value of our Union is to 
be found in those principles of justice, liberty, and human- 
ity which inspire it. But if by any infernal juggle these 
principles must be yielded up to preserve the Union, then 
a corpse only will be left in our arms, deflowered, lifeless, 



T74 PATRJOriC ADDRESSES. 

worthless. A Union perpetuated by giving way to in- 
justice — a Union maintained by obedience to the desires of 
slavery — is but a compact of violence. We emphasize these 
things because the long continued cries of politicians have 
produced among sober Christian men an unquestioned 
and undisturbed conviction that no evil can be so 
great as the dissolution of our Union. There are many 
evils infinitely greater. The loss of a national conscience 
is greater. The loss of public humanity is greater. An 
indifference to the condition of millions of miserable creat- 
ures, whose degradation, vices, ignorance, and animalism 
plead with our conscience in their behalf; this would be an 
unspeakably greater evil. So long as we can maintain 
the Union on terms which allow us to act with a free con- 
science, with humanity unviolated, we shall count no sac- 
rifice dear to maintain it. But religion and humanity are 
a price too dear to pay even for the Union ! 

Our Southern brethren often complain that we don't 
understand their condition or sympathize with their real 
difficulties. Even so, too, we complain that they do not 
understand our situation and sympathize with our difficul- 
ties. There are hundreds of thousands of men to whom 
conscience is a law — a law notwithstanding the sneers of 
those who flout at the idea of a conscience party. But 
^ there is a conscience party ! There is a stern and growing 
feeling in the Free States, not yet expressed by any dis- 
tinctive organization, that the time has come for a stand 
against any future national inhumanity. We can bear 
much, but we cannot and will not bear the guilt of Slavery. 
We regard it as epitomizing every offense which man can 
commit against man. It takes liberty from those to whom 
God gave it as the right of all rights. It forbids all food 
either for the understanding or the heart. It takes all 
honesty from the conscience. Its takes its defense from 
virtue, and gives all authority into the hands of lustful or 
pecuniary cupidity. It scorns the family, and invades it 
whenever desire or the want of money prevail, with the 
same coolness with which a drover singles out a heifer, or 
a butcher strikes down a bullock. These are not the acci- 



SHALL WE COMPROMISE? 175 

dents of slavery. They are its legitimate fruits. They 
are its vitality. If you stop these evils you will destroy 
the system. Let the slave be taught; let him have, not a 
filtered and adulterated Gospel, but that Gospel which an- 
gels heralded, strangely filling the air with the cry, " Peace 
on earth and good will toward men " — and it will make 
the slaves what it made the barbarous Briton and the rude 
Saxon — freemen and refined Christians. Take from Slav- 
ery its right to merchandise, forbid the disruption of 
families, the sale of slaves from the homestead where they 
were born, and the system will stink in the nostrils of 
Southern planters as it now does in our own. 

Now we declare that into a fellowship with these mon- 
strous evils, whose perpetration around our whole Southern 
coast is enough to preoccupy the heavenly tribunal of 
mercy, and to exhaust its patience on only this form of all 
the world-wide human suffering, we have been drawn un- 
wittingly. We did not know, or did not think, that to 
swear fealty to the Constitution was to swear preservation 
to Slavery. We had always understood that the compro- 
mises of the Constitution were agreed upon in the North, 
only that time might be given for Slavery to die out. But 
if another construction be made, and becomes the settled 
reading of that instrument; if the North is to have the 
the guilt and the South the profits of Slavery; if we are 
henceforth to understand that Slavery is federal and na- 
tional, recognized in the all-embracing Constitution, then 
but one course is left us. No earthly consideration shall 
make us partners in this monstrosity. We most solemnly 
declare, by our belief in Humanity, by our hopes in religion, 
by our faith in Christ, that we will cut every cord of op- 
pression whose force is derived from us. And if in so doing 
men choose to interpose the Constitution, upon their heads 
be the blame. Palsied be that hand and blasted those lips 
which shall make our Constitution, ordained for freedom, 
the instrument of bondage and cruelty! 

We shall study to circumscribe Slavery where it now ex- 
ists. We shall oppose every party that secretly or openly 
connives at it. We shall be hostile to every measure which 



176 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

consults its interests. We shall not cease to stand upon 
the brink of this dismal abyss, and over against its smoke 
and wails to pray with agonizing earnestness, " How long, 
O Lord, how long! " A day will come — in God's counsels 
it is already seen advancing — when men will look back 
upon this system as we now look at the dungeons and tri- 
bunals of the Inquisition. In that day, many a man will 
deny his parentage and forswear the ancestors, who either 
forged fetters for the slave, or more meanly blew the bel- 
lows for those who wrought at the anvil of oppression. 
May my children to the latest generation, in looking back 
to my example, take courage, and strike home for Liberty 
and Humanity ! 

With these views, no soothsayer is needed to interpret 
our views of the extension of Slavery. It is not enough 
that we do not will it. Every man consents to it who does 
not exhaust his strength in endeavoring to prevent it. 

Nor do we misunderstand the cunning cry of those who 
ask us to leave the issues of this question in new ter- 
ritories to chance. Nowadays chance has too many wires 
and wire-workers to suit our ideas of luck. Chance is the 
merest gambler. The dice are loaded. The cards are 
marked. Only the victim dreams that there is fair play. 
The South is to deal, the North is to take what cards are 
flirted to its hands. Who doubts the issue? How many 
more games than those already played are needed before 
the dupe shall suspect foul play? No: by as much as Lib- 
erty is dearer to us than Slavery, by so much should we be 
more active in its behalf than its adversaries are in behalf 
of Slavery. If they can toil night and day, dig deep 
trenches, bear burdens cheerfully to sink the rocky foun- 
dations for the towers of oppression, shall we have no 
bulwarks and no towers for Liberty ? Whenever and 
wherever a blow is struck for Slavery, then and there must 
be a double stroke for Liberty ! 

We will compromise any measures tending to prevent the 
extension of Slavery. We will compromise as'' to the par- 
ticulars of its death, laying out, and burial. But every 
compromise must include the advantage of Liberty and the 



SHALL WE COMPROMISE? 177 

disadvantage of Slavery. Compromises dictated by wily pol- 
iticians, made to serve a pinch in party tactics; compromises 
issuing from men whose ideas of patriotism are summed 
up in giving their adversaries a grip and downfall, to whom 
spoils are virtues and offices religion; or those better-in- 
tended compromises, like Mr. Clay's, which seek for peace, 
rather than for humanity; from such compromises, guile- 
less though they seem, and gilded till they shine like 
Heaven, evermore may we be delivered ! 

We shall abide by the Union. No vandal outrage shall 
our hands commit. We shall honor it by obedient lives, 
consecrate it by our prayers, purify it from the dross of in- 
justice, and give to it such foundations of Right as shall 
hold it steadfast amid all the revolutionary concussions of 
our day. If there be those who cannot abide the Union 
because it is pure and religious, just and humane, let them 
beware of that tumultuous scene into which they purpose 
to leap. 

But we do not believe that such an issue awaits us. The 
pliancy of miserable scramblers for political preferment 
has caused these violent gusts. Thus, hitherto, have vic- 
tories been gained for Slavery. Thus they are sought 
again. Firmness is the remedy for threats. If good men, 
having good representatives, are but firm, the storm will 
beat the stout oak, and rage like a demon through its 
twisted branches, but pass on and spend itself in the 
wilderness; meanwhile the returning sun shall find the 
noble tree unwrecked and fast-rooted. 

But if our Charter Oak is to be dismembered, God be 
thanked that its roots were planted in the soil of freedom ! 
There they were spread; its trunk and its mightiest 
branches will abide. The sun and the soil that nourished 
its infancy yet remain to repair what time and storms may 
mutilate. Beneath its shadow the poor and oppressed shall 
find shelter. 



AMERICAN SLAVERY.* 



I DO not forget, on appearing before you, my friends, 
the profession to which I belong. I bear in mind that I 
am a minister of Christ, and if I do not misapprehend the 
complexion of this audience, the far greater number of 
them are religious persons; most of you are either Chris- 
tians, or at any rate educated in Christianity, and hence I 
judge that the moral aspect of the Slavery Question will 
be the most interesting to you. I shall not consider the 
subject from the commercial standpoint, neither shall I 
take the political standpoint, nor the philanthropic, sim- 
ply as the philanthropic, but as a Christian, in its relations 
to Christianity shall I regard it — as a man who believes 
in God, in the immortality of the soul, in the rational 
and accountable nature of every human being that lives; 
as a preacher of the gospel, preaching God manifest in 
the flesh, do I feel deeply interested in this massive, this 
gigantic evil. 

And it is interesting to knaw how and in what way it 
has lived and thrived, how it has advanced upon us like 
the sea breaking down dykes and sweeping inward on the 
land. In every man there is an essential love of irrespon- 
sible power. It is the same under all governments, and in 
every age; for governments and institutions do not make 
men despotic. All men love irresponsible power. Every 
man has a king's heart beating under his ribs, yes, a pope's 
heart beating under his ribs — I have, you have. The feel- 
ing is, /will be master and you shall be servant; and when 
a man gets hold of this power he holds on to it. This is 
the way monarchies are sustained, and despotisms. The 
power is held, and strengthened, and accumulated till it 

* Speech before the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, New 
York, May 6, i8i;i. Reprinted from report in The Independent. \\\ , . 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. 



179 



becomes irresistible. So, after men become owners of 
slaves they feel like holding on to them — they like the 
power; and although slavery came upon us in our colonial 
days against our wishes, yet, once tasted, it is not strange 
that the power became sweet, and men desired to retain 
it; and this is the reason, I take it, that American slavery 
has come to be as strong as it is. But there were other 
causes for this. There was a time at the formation of the 
Constitution when slavery began to relax its hold, and 
when it was thought that like the late snows in April it 
would soon melt away; else there would have been no such 
compromises in the Constitution as there were. But then 
came a time when commercial profits became connected 
with slavery; the cultivation of rice, and cotton, and sugar 
became profitable; and then slavery became rejuvenated: 
and although Christianity can do much to control com- 
merce and temper commerce, and does do much, yet 
where the gains are large, there is no power which can 
restrain it throughout the whole community. 

It was Lord Brougham, I think, who said that where the 
slave trade was so profitable as to pay three hundred per 
cent., not all the navies of the globe could stop it; and 
when slavery began to pay enormous profits, not all the 
power of Christianity could stop it, especially when min- 
isters of the Gospel were found to step in and baptize it 
and call it Christian. \Cheers^^ 

Not only was commerce concerned in the augmentation 
of slavery, but to-day commerce, both in the South and in 
the North, is the bulwark of slavery; but for that no power 
on earth could save it; but the love of money blinds the 
eyes and stops the ears, and hardens the heart to all per- 
suasions of truth and justice. At the time of the forma- 
tion of the Constitution, slavery had not come to be so 
profitable, and the Christian feeling. North and South, 
made headway against it. 

And now we come to another reason of the continuance 
of slavery, which is to be found in the development of a 
political element of power, whose seeds were sown in the 
Constitution without any foresight of what the fruit would 



I So PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

be. For, to a great extent, the framing of laws and the 
making of Constitutions is experimental. You cannot tell 
beforehand how a law will work. The Constitution was 
built in one sense as men build a steamship — they build it 
as perfect as possible — after the best model, and yet they 
cannot tell certainly when it is on the stocks how it will 
sail. One ship from which the best was expected lags be- 
hind, and another outstrips all competitors. And so the 
framers of the Constitution could not tell how it would 
work till it was tried — they built it after the best model — 
but some provisions have turned out a great deal better 
than was- expected, and some a great deal worse than was 
expected, it is to be hoped ! But this one thing is certain, 
that the Constitution was formed as a /^cwc? ^^^ instrument 
of liberty. Its framers never thought that it would be 
twisted into an instrument to build up slavery. I acquit 
every delegate, whether he came from the North or the 
South, of any such designs. Not a delegate from the 
South had the first purpose of establishing slavery. This 
just compliment I would pay to the South, and I shall 
have other compliments to pay them before I am through. 

But we are not to forget, in enumerating the unpropi- 
tious causes of this monstrous evil, that Christianity has 
never yet been true to its own spirit. There is a Chris- 
tianity of the Bible, and a Christianity of the Church; but 
the latter does not always express the fullness or spirit of 
the former. 

Christianity is like the rising of the sun — the light steals 
up over the hills and touches the mountain tops, and moves 
on, parallel by parallel, and latitude by latitude, till it 
pours over the round globe. Now I say, Christianity 
never came up so high as to deal with slavery as it ought, 
and as I hope soon it will. [C7/^v;x] What attitude 
ought Christianity to hold towards the colored population, 
and this includes the African race North and South? In 
the first place, Christianity is no respecter of persons. 
Christ, in one sense, did not regard either Jew or Gentile, 
bond or free, rich or poor. But in another sense he did. 
There is a scale in society extending from the rich and 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. i8i 

cultivated down to the poor and ignorant. Christ did re- 
gard this difference, and he worked at the bottom first. 
What is the spirit of Christianity ? Is it not a spirit of love 
and mercy to the sinful, the helpless ? Does it not aim to do 
the most for those who need the most ? Christ regarded the 
poor, the most neglected, and despised, and as they really 
had his regard, so they felt a reciprocal sympathy of hope, 
and fiocked about him, to the joy of his heart and to the 
unspeakable disgust of the religious purists of their day. 
When the messengers of John came to him to inquire if He 
was the Messiah, he replied, Tell John that the blind see, 
the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead 
are raised, and to the poor the gospel is preached. This 
last- — the poor have the gospel preached to them, was the 
climax, and the great and glorious climax, which was 
proof irresistible. 

Now, have we treated the colored population as the 
spirit of Christ enjoins ? Let us first ask the South. We see 
there three million slaves. Their rights as men are taken 
away — their manhood is taken away. This idea I would 
have you feel. I would burn it into your souls. The wrong 
of slavery is not in muscles and bones— it is not that the 
slaves are poorly fed, or well fed, but it is that they are 
chattels. The radical idea of slavery is that the slave, who 
is a man, is not a man — that he is property, like a piece of 
furniture, or a brute. 

There was another system of slavery four thousand years 
ago, called Hebrew slavery. Now I will give a challenge 
to any man who may be present from the South, be he 
clergyman or layman — and I would say the same in 
Georgia if I were there, and I believe that I could say it 
there with less interruption than I can here — or rather I 
will make a fair compromise, as it is the day of compro- 
mises, though they are not all fair. I will yield the point of 
Bible slavery, and allow that there is a slavery presented 
in the Bible, if you at the South will agree to put Southern 
slavery on the platform of Bible slavery. 

There were three forms of servitude among the Hebrews. 

First, There was a servitude into which the Hebrews 



i82 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

themselves might come — which can be regarded but as an 
apprenticeship. It was limited to seven years; it did not 
take away any political right; nor did it forbid the slave 
the ownership of property. He could buy himself if he 
chose; or his friends had a right, at any time, peremptorily 
to release him by purchase. 

Secondly^ There was the public slavery — that of the 
Gibeonites, who did service for the commonwealth, very 
much as our State prison convicts do. 

Thirdly, There was the Hebrew bond service, which was 
slavery proper. But Moses did not enact this slavery; he 
found it, and he regulated it and limited it. All the laws 
concerning slavery were for its amelioration. 

In the first place, these bond-slaves could be made only 
among the heathen; and secondly, no one could be made 
a slave from among them until he had been circumcised — 
in other words, until he had been introduced into the 
privileges of the church; and thirdly, the master was 
obliged to give them a religious education. 

Now in our modern system of education there is first 
the family, and then the school, and the magazines, and 
the newspapers. But then there were only five books, 
called the Pentateuch, and the whole system of education 
was comprised in instruction in these five books; and in 
these every slave must be educated. If the same regula- 
tion was carried out now, it would require the Southern 
slave-owner to send his slave to the academy, and then put 
him through some Northern college, and graduate him, be- 
fore he tied him down to the plow or hoe of the plantation. 
\_Enthusiastic cheering^ That was the Hebrew idea of 
slavery. Then, again, if any one will enter into a calcula- 
tion, he will find that the Hebrew slave had about one- 
half of his time to himself. Moreover, the Hebrew slave 
had every motive held out to him to rise. He could, un- 
der certain circumstances, hold property — he could better 
his condition, advance, establish himself independently. 
All the laws of Moses were in favor of the slave — for his 
advantage, his benefit, his encouragement, his defense. If 
a slave was wronged or abused, he could go into a court 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. 183 

and get speedy and sure redress; and if he was maimed he 
immediately became free, the injury being the warrant of 
his liberty. There was, moreover, a standing canon, that 
when a slave ran away he should not be forcibly returned. 
The attempt has been made to show that this did not apply 
to Hebrew slaves, but only to those who fled from among 
the heathen. But it was not so — this was not so. Slavery 
was so regulated, in fact, that it was expected that a slave 
would never wish to run away. And if he did run away, 
that very fact was regarded as evidence that he ought to 
have run away. And I think that the same presumption 
should be held now, and all the world over. [^C/ieers.^ 
Such was the system of slavery four thousand years ago, 
among a people who had but just shook off the dust of 
Egyptian bondage — ^just dried their garments from the 
waters of the Red Sea — but no ! they did not need to dry 
their garments — I remember they came through on dry 
ground [/ai/ghte?-] — just emerged into the dim twilight of 
education, blest with only the first few rays of revelation. 

Four thousand years have passed since that day, and 
during this time the canon of Scripture has been com- 
pleted, and the full blaze of Christianity has been poured 
upon the world, and Christ has come, and there have been 
contentions, and revolutions, and martyrs for the truth, and 
education, and with great labor the bulwark of civil lib- 
erty has been hewn out and built up, and schools and 
churches have been established, and of those four thousand 
years, two thousand have been under the dispensation of 
the blessed Gospel, and now we have tried our hand at 
slavery. Let us see how we have succeeded. The Hebrews 
legislated for their slaves as men, but we make them prop- 
erty — chattels. They are not men but brutes. Four thou- 
sand years ago the slave enjoyed the privileges of the 
church — the Temple worship; now we give him no re- 
ligion. Four thousand years ago the slave enjoyed the 
rights and privileges of the family state; now the chas- 
tity of man and woman is no more regarded than that 
of a dog. Four thousand years ago the laws were made 
for the slave; now they are made for the master. Four 



iS4 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

thousand years ago a slave could seek redress in court; now 
there is not a court from Mason and Dixon's line through 
to Texas where a slave can open his mouth as a witness and 
be believed. Ah ! if you will only bring American slavery 
on the platform of Hebrew slavery — if you will give the 
slave the Bible, and send him to the school, and open the 
doors of the courts to him, then we will let it alone — it will 
take care of itself. In old times slaves were treated as 
children of a family — trained, nurtured, educated. Let 
the Southern slaveholder do like this. Then would slavery 
soon cease, for the care and expense would be greater than 
any one could bear. 

I have to work hard enough to provide for my three 
children; but suppose I had five hundred children! what 
should I do? \^Laughte)'^ 

My friends, I have not painted up slavery in strong col- 
ors: I have only given you the outline — I have only done 
as the painter does before he puts in the colors — with chalk 
marked out the design. \Cheers^ 

Has Christianity in the South rebuked this system ? 
Where has it? What pulpit does it? Yes, it has in some 
places; a few pulpits have spoken; Christianity has in 
some instances, perhaps in many, modified and lessened the 
evils, but not so taking the South comprehensively. 

[Mr. Beecher attempted to proceed, but being interrupted by 
hisses, he remarked that as he had been heard uninterruptedly for 
some time it was fair that the other side should have a chance. 
The cheers which followed effectually drowned the hisses.J 

At the South adultery among slaves is not held to be a 
reason for church discipline. \^Hissesi\ I am glad to see 
some sense of shame for this. \Cheers^ The public con- 
science is being aroused. Do you know that at the South 
in marrying slaves the minister leaves out the words, 
" What God has joined together let no man put asunder ? " 
It must be left out, for perhaps in a few weeks the husband 
will be separated from the wife, and sent to another plan- 
tation, and then if he chooses he can take another wife, and 
if he is a member of the church it does not hurt his stand- 
ing; and then another and another, till perhaps he may 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. 



185 



have twenty wives, and still his letter of recommendation 
from one church to another is as good as ever. \A voice — 
There are men in New York who have twenty wives?[ I am 
sorry for them. I go in for their immediate emancipation. 
\^Great cheering?^ 

And now, I do not ask whether Christian pulpits in the 
South have not preached orthodox theology — good moral- 
ity, obedience to their masters, and in general, kindness 
on the part of the master to his slaves. All this, doubt- 
less. But I ask has Christianity made itself/^//, has it taken 
the authority of God, and the full power of Christ, and 
risen up to assert for the slave the right of manhood, and 
to rebuke that legal doctrine of unutterable infamy, that a 
slave is a chattel ? Has it asserted for the slave the rights 
of knowledge ? Has it demanded and provided for him a 
simple religious instruction ? Above all, has it asserted for 
the slave the right and duty of personal virtue, and re- 
deemed women from the promiscuous lust of their mas- 
ters ? Has it brought all the thunders of God's throne to 
defend the sanctity of the Family State? 

Or if it has not, O what a wretched Christianity is that 
which permits, or slurs over, the profoundest ignorance, 
the negation of manhood, the rupture and dispersion of 
the family; the violation of chastity and virtue? What is 
left when personal liberty, civil rights, the privileges of the 
family state, and personal morals are all swept away? The 
law declares a slave to be a mere chattel, and the Christian- 
ity of the South has not indignantly redeemed him from 
this blasphemous abuse ! 

Let no one say that we represent the abuse of the sys- 
tem. The system cannot be abused. Its very fundamental 
principle includes every infamy which can insult manhood 
or degrade a man ! To say to three million men, made by 
God, Ye are not men, but, like oxen and horses, like dogs 
and hogs, ye are Things, Property, Chattels — why to 
talk of the abuse of a system which has this for its ele- 
mentary principle, is as wild as it would be to talk of the 
abuse of robbery, the abuse of murder, the abuse of 
adultery ! 



1 86 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

What has the North done for its colored population ? 
Here is a class downcast and downtrodden, among us — the 
poor, the despised, the weak. It is the duty of the church 
to go to them, and help them and recover them, and lift 
them up. How is it? The doors of the schools and col- 
leges are shut against them, and the doors of the trades 
are shut. A mechanic thinks it a disgrace to work with a 
slave. The odium of Southern slavery has extended over 
the North. Has Christianity come in to aid and protect 
and save ? No. A few States allow colored people to 
vote, but in most the color of the skin disfranchises a 
man. Has the church said. By the spirit of Christianity, 
by the power of the cross, this shall not be so ! No, she 
has said, " There's the ship, and there's Africa. You had 
better go to Africa — colonize ! " 

These remarks are not aimed at the Colonization Society. 
I am for colonization. If any one wishes to go to Africa 
I would give him the means of going, and for the sake of 
the continent of Africa, colonization is the true scheme; 
but if colonization is advocated for our sake, I say. Get thee 
behind me, Satan, thou savorest not of the things that be 
of God but those that be of men. Do your duty first to 
the colored people here, educate them, Christianize them, 
and then colonize them. [C/ztrri'.] 

I have given you the dark side of the picture thus far, 
but it is gradually growing lighter and lighter. The North 
is becoming thoroughly aroused. This has been accom- 
plished in a tempestuous way — in an injurious way — I wish 
that it could have been done in a different and a better 
way — yet I forbear — I will not speak harshly of any who 
have labored in this great cause of human liberty. But 
the North are looking at this matter, they wish to know 
their duty, they are taking the Bible in their hands, and 
Northern men are more and more rapidly coming to see 
what their duty is. This is evident from the growing 
sensitiveness of the South. The true way is to correct 
public sentiment at the North first, get it right here, purify 
and sweeten it here and let it act on the South. Every 
curative process begins from without, and so it must be in 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. . 1S7 

this case; and considering the danger my neck would be 
exposed to at the South, I would prefer on the whole to 
work at the North. \^Laughter^^ 

The first effect of this at the South was the fear that the 
system would perish, and hence came, first the effort to 
extend slave territory, and then political agitation. And 
out of this grew that worst of all unbaptized monsters, the 
Fugitive Slave Law. Some years ago there was a progress 
at the South towards the removal of slavery, and it was 
checked it is said by agitation. Agitation ? what have we 
got to work with but agitation ? Agitation is the thing in 
these days for any good; not agitation by bayonets, but 
agitation by brains, agitation by free thoughts and words, 
agitation of hearts and consciences; and the day is coming 
when moral truths will be as free as air, breathed in and 
breathed out by every one. 

Our first business is then to limit slavery within its 
present bounds; there is nothing in the Constitution against 
this at any rate; then, secondly, to see to it that the South 
has not factitious help from us in the support of slavery; 
and thirdly, not to interfere directly with slavery where it 
is. We will all do what the sun does when it comes up 
over the eastern hills; it looks at a mountain of ice and 
melts it. \Cheersi\ If our missionaries want to convert 
the Arabs, they cannot preach to them when they are on 
horseback, for they will run away; they must make the 
Arabs sit down and be fixed in one spot. And so must we 
do with slavery; we must hitch her and anchor her, and 
then begin with brotherly affection to kill her. [^Repeated 
cheers.'] And then with our hearts warm and kind, and 
with no hasty or hard remarks, we must preach the Bible 
to them, and preach till we make slavery a burden to their 
consciences and a burden to their pockets, as it is now a 
burden on God's forbearance ! [^Cheers.] 

But then came along agitation, it is said^ — O ! agitation ? 
Who are the agitators ? Some say we are, and some say they 
are. Now I will not remain quiet under this charge of un- 
just and improper agitation. They are the agitators who 
fortify and extend an evil which is a poison to liberty, in- 



1 88 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

fidel to religion, and hateful to God and all good men. 
They are agitators who attempt to suppress free thought 
and free speech. There is but one agitation that will dis- 
solve the Union — which I love full as much as do those 
dry-nurses of the Union, the Union Safety Committee — 
and that is, the attempt to make free speech penal, to 
bridle the Pulpit, muzzle the Press, and fetter the tongue ! 
That will blow the Union to atoms. I would have such 
agitation as Dr. Wayland and Dr. Fuller of North Carolina 
had, the agitation of free discussion. We shall say what 
we think and feel, and the South shall say what they think 
and feel; and when we have joined with them in this way 
we shall have the hip lock and throw them. \Rcpeated 
cheering?^ 

It seems as if the devil could not stay quietly in hell, but 
must do as he always has done, wander up and down through 
the earth, and so at last he found himself at Washington; 
but there he came out, unfortunately with hoofs, tail, 
horns, and all, not in the disguise of an angel of light, but 
in the form of the Fugitive Slave Law. 

There is nothing, I think, that has come so near to mak- 
ing an impassable gulf between the South and the North 
as this Fugitive Slave Law. I am opposed to this Fugitive 
Slave Law, in the first place, because of the inhumanity of 
what it compels us to do. If a convict, whose time was 
nearly out at the State Prison, should escape, I should not 
feel exactly like catching him and sending him back, yet 
still I might do it and not feel very badly, and I would do 
it if I was called upon for the sake of the Union \lajigh- 
tcr^ for I love the Union, and I do not yield to any one in 
my love for the Union, not even to the members of the 
Union Safety Committee ! But this law demands — what? 
Not merely the sending back of a fugitive from unrequited 
work — to a meager fare — to physical discomfort. Slavery 
is a state of mental and moral bondage, worse than any 
mere bondage of muscle possibly can be. This is a point of 
conscience with me as a Christian. I cannot, I will not, I 
would myself sooner die than force, or, in the most indirect 
manner, countenance the rendition of a man back to a 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. 



ih'9 



bondage which crushes his manhood, robs his intellect, 
enfeebles his moral nature, and, while cheating him in re- 
spect to Time, sends him blindfold and stumbling head- 
long into Eternity. This law says that I must take a 
woman, who has just escaped, panting, from slavery, who 
has just begun to breathe the air of freedom, and send her 
back to the shambles of lust, where men may look at their 
slaves as they do at brutes, where there is no religion for 
the slave, no sacred marriage, no law, no schools, no honor, 
and no protection — back to the heated and seething waves 
of damnation. It is this the Fugitive Slave Law asks us 
to do, and we have ministers of the gospel who preach to 
us that this is Christianity ! I do not say this in anger, 
God forbid ! but in shame. God judge between them and 
the oppressed ! 

There are two ways of sending fugitives back into slav- 
ery. Paul gives us an account of one way — the way he 
sent back the slave Onesimus. Now if people will adopt 
Paul's way I would not object. In the first place, he in- 
structed him in Christianity, and led him to become a 
Christian. Then he wrote a letter and sent it by Onesi- 
mus. The slave was not sent off under the charge of 
officers, but he went back alone, of his own free will, with 
a letter and recommendation as a brother beloved. 

There are venerable clergymen, old and wise men they 
are called, — and you would presume from what they say 
that they are very old, and I do not know as they will think 
that, young as I am, I ought to say what I have, — who have 
had a good deal to say about sending back this slave 
Onesimus as an example for us. I wish it could be made 
the example. I would like to see it followed. I would 
like to see the marshals sitting down to convert some fugi- 
tive slaves; and I would not speak disrespectfully of those 
clergymen, for I have respect for them — in spots. \_Laughter^ 
And I wish that this letter of Paul's might be published by 
the American Tract Society, and sent all over the Union. 
\Cheers^ 

I object to the law also because it commands me to do 
what is essentially wrong. If it is right to send back Long 



ipo PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and Simms it is right to send back Dr. Pennington, a 
minister of the gospel, who has received a doctorate from 
a German university — not that the doctorate makes him 
any better man, for a doctorate is of about as much use as 
a butment to a church — a man who was a member of Dr. 
Cox's church; I say, if it is right to send Long back, it is 
right to send Dr. Pennington back. What would Dr. Cox 
say to this? And Dr. Cox ought to know all about this 
great subject, for he has been on all sides of it ! I do not 
know but that Dr. Pennington would be sent back, unre- 
deemed as he is; and he is obliged now to stay in England, 
protected by monarchical England from the oppression of 
democratic America. Say, would any one send Dr. Pen- 
nington back? \A voice., '■''I would;'' another, '''■I too" another^ 
^^I three."'\ Would any man in /lis senses send him back? 
{^Great applause.^ 

Thirdly, I am amazed at the Fugitive Slave Law, be- 
cause it is so utterly unfit for the object for which it was 
made. The old law did not send back the slaves, not one 
V per cent, of all that escaped. No more does the new law. 
Perhaps you are not aware, my friends, that there is an 
underground railroad running through this city. I am 
not a conductor on it [el/eers], but I hear of it, and I 
understand that there are forty slaves who go up on it, to 
one who goes back. But the fault is not in the law. The 
old law was w^eak through the flesh, and the new one 
proves just the same. [C//£'(?/\t.] This case is something 
like that of fishing. Now my father is a good fisherman, 
a very expert one, while I know nothing about it, and it 
makes no difference whether I hold an old stick for a pole 
with a crooked pin for a hook, or an elegant brass-feruled 
extension rod with a fly scientifically fixed. I cannot in 
either case catch any fish. I cannot catch any with the 
bent pin, and it would do no good to give me the fly. So 
it is with the law. The South could not catch their slaves 
with the old law, and they went to work to manufact- 
ure a new one, complete in all its parts — a perfect, elegant, 
brass-feruled law; but after all they won't do any better 
with the new law. The trouble is not in the law — that 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. 191 

was good enough before — they have a bad fishing ground ! 
{Cheers^ If a man was sick with the cholera, and should 
give a dose of medicine to his horse, that would not do 
him much good. So in this case. It was the public sen- 
timent that was sick, and they've been dosing the law. 
S^Repeated c/ieers.'\ 

My next objection to the Fugitive Slave Law is, that it 
stirs up ill blood where we cannot afford to have it stirred 
up. It does this by its wording. It seems as if it was 
worded especially to insult the North. A man once, de- 
scribing a minister at the West, said: "He preaches as 
if he had the devil in him — why, he heaves out the prom- 
ises of God with a pitchfork." And so this law deals — 
and the pitchfork it uses is no common pitchfork, but one, 
it would seem, imported from the pit below. \^Cheers.'\ 

Fourthly, This law takes away or abridges the liberty 
of freemen. We know little about the terror that it has 
sent among the free colored population of the North — how 
it has scattered them like partridges in the mountains be- 
fore the shot of the hunter. Families have fled from 
places where they were comfortably and respectably es- 
tablished and held property. The free colored people 
have felt no security for their liberty. They have feared 
that they would be sent to slavery courts, before slavery 
judges, with slavery witnesses, to be tried in regard to 
their right to liberty. But no — I will not sneer — I take 
that back; for it seems to me I would sooner trust a 
Southern court than a Northern one. I think that in the 
matter of slaves the Southern courts have generally been 
fairer than those of the North. 

And fifthly, This law obliges the citizens to do that 
which they cannot conscientiously do. It comes to me 
and says, Henry Ward Beecher, you must do this; if I call 
upon you you must assist as a good citizen in returning 
this runaway. And because last night I received into my 
house a poor, wandering, famishing woman, and gave her 
meat to eat, and water to drink, and a place to rest — be- 
cause I befriended and protected her — it comes and lays 
its strong hand on me for doing that which Christ com- 



192 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

\ manded; and if I am too poor to pay the fine, it throws 
me into prison. To be sure no such cases have occurred, 
and I pray God they may not occur, but they can occur; 
and the man that executes the law in this point, let him 
beware how he meets his victim at the day of judgment! 
The law is bad enough in obliging the officers to execute 
it, but when it comes down among the citizens, when it 
forbids us helping a man to liberty, I say, God do so to 
me, and more also, if I do not help him freedomward ! 
\Grcat applause.'] I say this was not good brotherhood in 
the South — this was not kind, the course of Christian 
policy was not to irritate feeling. It was their duty to be 
forbearing, it was our duty to be forbearing — for the sake 
of the Union — and I do not say this in the miserable cant 
of the Union Safety Committee, who are upholding a mere 
bunion of self-interest, but I mean the glorious Union that 
was made by our fathers for liberty, the Union for free- 
idom, the Union for Christianity. Now this law was fired 
right in the face of the North, in the face of the moral 
feeling of the North — it was a bombarding of the North 
— park after park of artillery — and the cannoneer, alas ! 
Vv'as one who fired at his own hearthstone ! And this 
great man, not many years ago, made a prediction at 
Niblo's Garden. He said, in effect, that this subject of 
slavery had arrested the religious feelings of the country, 
that it had taken strong hold on the consciences of men, 
that it is not to be trifled with or despised, and that any 
attempt to coerce it into silence, to compress and confine 
it, warm as it is, would assuredly cause an explosion, which 
would endanger the Constitution and the Union itself. 
Ah ! how soon has he forgotten his own great words ! It 
was spoken as only Webster can speak; and when I re- 
member that prediction and turn to this law, I cannot but 
cry out in the deepest sorrow — Oh, Lucifer ! son of the 
morning, how art thou fallen ! I would not speak harshly 
of Daniel Webster — the time was when there was no man I 
so much revered; and for statesman's genius, for stature 
of understanding, there is no man on the globe, since the 
death of Robert Peel, who is his equal. No, I would not 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. 193 

cast stones at him. I would rather do as did the sons of 
Noah, and going backward cast a cloak over his nakedness. 
And yet when, in these times, every one has to step over, 
or through, or around Webster, I cannot but allude to him, 
and I say that much as I revere him, much as I am proud 
of him — and I am proud of him for his noble intellect, en- 
cased in such a noble frame — yet Liberty is dearer. Truth 
is dearer, Christianity is dearer. 

My sixth objection is that bad laws are a treason to good 
government. I know of nothing that has so promoted a 
disregard of authority, and a contempt of all law, as the 
enactment of this Fugitive Slave Law. 

And I object to the law because of its sequences. Bad 
laws always bring bad sequences; the evil does not stop 
with the law itself or its enactment. And the first bad se- 
quence that came of it was that impotent, empty thunder- 
bolt of a Union Safety Committee, whose members read 
their ledgers for their duty, and feel in their pockets for 
their consciences. \^Great applause?^ There must be some 
scarecrows, I suppose, in every large field, though men do 
do not usually feel like electing themselves to that ofifice. 
\^Laughter^ 

Another objection to the law is that it brought into 
vogue a style of reasoning that, if believed in, would over- 
throw all human governments. The higher law — the law \ 
of conscience, the law of God, the law upon which obedi- 
ence to all law is based — has been cried down and scouted, 
not by politicians only but by ministers. Ministers of Jehovah ' 
have cast scorn on the higher law of Jehovah, and preached 
up the lower law doctrine; and very low they have gottoo, 
we should judge, from their sepulchral tones at present. 
Nay, more, they have taken this opportunity to show their 
ill-blood against rival denominations, and even to vent 
their ill-will against individuals, mixing up private wrongs 
with public wrongs, and personal feuds with national 
questions. And documents teaching this doctrine have 
been sent by tens of thousands through the groaning mails 
all over our land, through all the valleys and over all the 
plains and across the mountains, into towns and villages 



194 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and hamlets. And this doctrine, so taught and so sent, is 
nothing else than the doctrine of kings and despots, of the 
divine right of rulers, of non-resistance to power, however 
oppressive. It is nothing else than a dressing up of the old 
doctrine of Laud and the Stuarts in a modern suit. If 
that is the doctrine to be taught and believed and adopted, 
then there is no chance for republican institutions. Why 
is it that France has no firm republic after all its revolutions ? 
Why is it that Italy, — groaning Italy, — striving and strug- 
gling for a republic, does not gain it? Why is it that 
Hungary — bleeding, prostrate Hungary — failed in her at- 
tempt ? It is because the common people are trodden 
down, because they have given up their consciences to 
priests and magistrates; and if this comes to be the custom 
in America, then all hope of freedom is lost. Human nature 
is a poor affair — man is but a pithy, porous, flabby substance, 
till you put conscience into him; and as for building a re- 
public on men who do not hold to the rights of private 
conscience, who will not follow their own consciences 
rather than that of any priest or public, you might as well 
build the Custom House in Wall Street on a foundation of 
cotton wool ! But the nation that regards conscience more 
than anything else, above all customs and all laws, is, like 
New England, with its granite hills, immovable and in- 
vincible; and the nation that does not regard conscience is 
a mere base of sand, and quicksand too, at that. If you 
want this country to be like Turkey, or Egypt, or Algiers, 
give up the rights of private conscience, and you will have 
it so, soon enough. 

Yes ! The time will come when, on reading the epitaph 
of a man, which records that here lies A. B., author of a 
learned commentary on this or that book, and defender of 
the doctrine that the people must give up their consciences 
to magistrates and priests, the people will lift up their 
hands in astonishment, and exclaim, " God have mercy on 
his soul ! " \Cheering?[ 

My friends, if I have had the appearance of severity in 
these remarks, I have not meant to be severe; I have only 
wished to say frankly and fully what I most deeply and 



AMERICAN SLAVERY. 



195 



truly believe, and if I should meet a slaveholder in con- 
versation, I should say just the same. He might reply, I 
don't believe all you do, but you say what you think, and I 
like you; you are no doughface. S^Laiighter.^ I don't ask 
you to believe just what I say, but I do ask you to think 
of it; think of it with the Bible in your hands, think of it 
on your knees, think of it as patriots, as philanthropists, 
as Christian men, as inheritors of immortality, and if you 
will think of it, O ! if you will think of it, you will find 
the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 



ON WHICH SIDE IS PEACE? 



There are periods in the history of man, and of com- 
munities, in which timid counsels are rash and dangerous. 
When a building is on fire, and quantities of explosive ma- 
terials are awaiting its approach, the only moderation con- 
sists in the most intense courage and desperate daring. 
He is the prudent man who rushes in between the flame 
and the powder and separates them. The man who ad- 
vises the fireman to wait — who hopes the evil will cure 
itself — is a madman and an incendiary. We are brought into 
a condition of national affairs in which the smooth and easy 
road will lead to destruction, while peace lies at the end 
of a straight but narrow way. 

The North desires peace. True civilization will always 
desire it. It is the atmosphere in which the innumerable 
fruits of learning and refinement ripen. All the interests 
of the North — agricultural, manufacturing, commercial, 
social, civil, and religious — demand domestic peace. The 
sentiment of peace pervades all classes of men, and in 
breadth and power it approaches the dignity of a nat- 
ural law. It holds down all repulsive influences with a 
grasp as silent but as omnipotent as the law of gravita- 
tion. This longing for quiet is not to be blamed. It is 
wise and legitimate. It springs from the very nature of a 
civilization which has much treasure to guard, and much 
to develop. But, by as much as it is desirable, by so 
much should wise men see to it that they follow those 
measures which really lead to it, and avoid those which, 



* Editorial article in The Independent, June 26, 1856, written during the 
first campaign of the Republican Party, when John C. Fremont was their 
presidential candidate (James Buchanan representing the Democratic 
Party); and the question at issue was chiefly the policy of permitting the 
extension of slavery into the free Territories of the United States. 




y^^, /£^*^^.^^^^^j^— 



ON WHICH SIDE IS PEACE? 



197 



under a specious appearance of peace, lead inevitably to 
the most fatal commotions. 

The building is on fire already. The flame is running 
into the magazine. What is prudence? To let it alone? 
To counsel moderation ? Or to arouse and take the ele- 
ments into our hand, and control while yet they may be 
controlled ? 

There are fifteen States in our Union which have based 
their social condition upon a system of involuntary servi- 
tude. Whether right or wrong, that system is one which 
works more mischief on the whites than upon the 
blacks. It demoralizes not only their manners and per- 
sonal habits, but their political ideas. For intelligence 
among slaves would make them insubordinate. They 
must be kept low in the scale of civilization or they 
cannot be managed. To do this, not only must they not 
be taught, but they must not even hear too much. Preach- 
ing must be guarded, political speeches must be guarded, 
conversation must be guarded, newspapers must be cir- 
cumspect. One spark may explode a magazine, and one 
word touch off a servile insurrection fatal alike to master 
and slave. To keep fetters on their servants, they must 
keep fetters on their own tongues. Every mouth is a 
prison, every tongue is a prisoner. Liberty of speech and 
of the press, liberty of political action, in the Slave States, 
but especially the more southern ones, would break them 
up. Men cannot couple liberty and monarchy together. 
They will not work in one yoke. If slavery is taken, all its 
sequences, guards, exclusions, and inclusions must go with 
it. The man who lives in the South, who believes in the 
slave system, is only consistent, having gone so far, in going 
■farther and putting down inflammatory speech. And as 
all free speech or speech for freedom is inflammatory when 
uttered amidst those who are enslaved, there is no other 
way but to suppress it. If it is right to have slavery, it is 
right to have its necessary defenses. Ignorance is right if 
slavery is right. Free speech is wrong if slavery is right. 
A system of force cannot deal with moral suasion. You 
cannot lay the foundations of a political system upon the 



198 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

law of Might, and then run up its towers and spires by the 
doctrine of Right. 

Therefore it is, that if the Slave States are right in main- 
taining their system of slavery, the South can no more help 
being driven along the path of these doctrines of despot- 
ism than a ship can help flying wildly over the waves when 
omnipotent storms drive her. As a ship may be carried by 
an unknown and unsuspected current far out of its track 
and away from the intent of its master, so communities 
oftentimes are carried by powerful latent tendencies, over 
which they have no control, and whose very existence they 
do not suspect. It is so with the South. The people of 
the South are going upon a current which exists without 
their volition. The tendency of things drifts men and parties. 
One step after another is taken because a pressure is on 
them which they cannot resist. 

There is, then, no abstract repugnance to free speech in 
the South. Very much the contrary. But there is a prac- 
tical conviction that it will not do. Facts drive them from 
their own doctrines. There is no theoretic disposition to 
abridge liberty of speech in Congress. But our country is 
now so sympathetically connected, the transmission of 
news is so marvelously easy and quick, that Congress has 
become a speaking trumpet. The whole nation hears its 
speeches. Is it strange that men who stand upon a sys- 
tem which is in perpetual danger, should object to have the 
North put its lips to that trumpet and blow its blasts of 
freedom all over Southern plantations? The Southern 
man says: "With you it is not a necessity to speak; with us 
it is a matter of necessity to have silence. You can carry 
on all your commerce, your civic arts, your industrial pur- 
suits, without uttering such speeches of liberty. If you are 
silent it does you no harm. But our position is one of life 
and death. Such utterance sets fire to the foundations on 
which we stand. It is not fair. It is only a theoretic sen- 
timent that impels you. It is self-existence that drives 
us! " As a matter of fact this is true. A system of slavery 
is imperiled by the natural conduct of a system of liberty. 
It is the necessity of slavery to make freedom dumb. 



ON WHICH SIDE IS PEACE? 



199 



The same secret, fatal current of necessity drifts the 
South toward the extension of slavery. While Free States 
are growing with prodigious disproportion, there can be 
no doubt that Slave States will become imbecile and help- 
less in comparison. Virginia cannot grow — Pennsylvania 
cannot stand still. The Carolinas are sinking by the nature 
of their industry — New York is advancing prodigiously. 
Georgia has no chance in a match with Ohio. If the Slave 
States stand as they are, and depend upon the inherent 
energies of their own system, they are doomed, inevitably, 
to become the last and least. That which they lack, there- 
fore, in intrinsic force, they are compelled to seek by <?.r/^;z- 
sion. Arkansas supplements Virginia. When New York 
weighs down the Carolinas, Texas is thrown in to bring up 
the scale. That which the South ask is, the liberty of 
carving two-thirds of the continent into States, to makeup 
the continual disparity induced by the slave system, as 
compared with the system of free labor. 

Every Northern man should thoroughly understand that 
the policy of the South is not one of vexatious haughtiness. 
It is a policy the necessity of which springs from the very 
organization of their society, from the irresistible nature 
of their industrial system. They cannot help themselves. 
If they would they cannot. They are on a current which 
sweeps them whether they will or not. As long as the 
North is left to believe that the demands of the South are 
from excitement, that they have been provoked to violence, 
it will seem very reasonable to expect that forbearance, 
conciliation, and compromise will restore good temper, and 
with returning temper, that things will grow peaceable. 
But when it is believed that these events in the South come 
from a law stronger than volition, from a law which under- 
lies society, and compels its movements, and which will still 
compel them, the question assumes a very different aspect. 
And wise men will be called to reflect whether it is best to 
put men who represent this system and all these tendencies 
into the places of supreme national power; whether it will 
be for the peace of this land that the whole government 
shall go over to the side of slavery, and be administered for 



200 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the sake of giving advantage and equipoise to this perpetu- 
ally careening and sinking system of servile industry. Shall 
this system be permitted to control the continent for the pur- 
pose of making up year by year its own desperate weakness ? 

The men who have for twenty years been acting under 
this slave necessity — who have been the involuntary slaves 
of their own slave system — are seeking to retain their hold 
upon the government. / 

The men who denied the right of petition; who made 
war on Mexico; who introduced Texas as-a Slave State; 
who compelled the North, in 1850, to take the Compro- 
mise, promising that it should be a finality; who broke a 
nation's word and faith, and abolished the Missouri Com- 
promise, promising that Kansas should be free or slave as 
its people chose; who, before the words of promise were 
cold, invaded Kansas with armed bands, and committed 
on the real settlers every crime which is marked on the 
criminal calendar; who sent thither United States troops, 
and brought the whole force of the Government to cor- 
roborate the civil war which the South had kindled there; 
who, failing in intimidating free speech, assaulted with a 
bludgeon,* in the Senate Chamber, one of the noblest na- 
tional men, and with almost unanimous consent justified 
the felony — this party have published a platform, and nom- 
inated a candidate for the next four critical years in our 
history. All those tendencies which, from time to time, 
have broken out from the necessities of the slave system 
are, in this platform, reduced to the form of political 
doctrines. Upon these new and revolutionary doctrines, 
born of the womb and nursed upon the bosom of Slavery, 
it is proposed to shape the policy of the next Administra- 
tion, and Mr. Buchanan has accepted the platform, and is 
pledged, if elected, to execute the doctrines of that plat- 
form. 



* Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, while sitting at his desk in the 
Senate Chamber, was assaulted by Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, 
who so beat him, defenseless and held down by his desk, that his life was 
despaired of; and in fact he died about eighteen years after (March 11, 1874) 
from an illness proceeding from his injuries received in that assault. 




r/ 



'^c\^-€j^ 



'^i^ 



ON WHICH SIDE IS PEACE? 20 1 

We ask every considerate man, will it be possible, with 
such a history coming on, to avoid a conflict, compared 
with which anything we have ever known will be child's 
play? Is that the road to peace which proposes to turn 
over to Southern hands, for construction and control, our 
Constitution, our National Government, our armed forces, 
and our whole Territory? When the arms of the South 
shall be made strong, and her feet shall be made firm upon 
the high places of Government, is there anything in the 
bearing and temper of the South hitherto which may lead 
us to hope for moderation ? Will not her necessities make 
her as violent hereafter as heretofore? If the lion's whelp 
is dangerous even when kenneled, will it become harmless 
when grown to the full lion, and roving at its will in un- 
restrained liberty? 

Mr. Buchanan, in his letter of acceptance, holds out to 
the North the ever grateful and always deceitful promise 
of peace. His administration, he affirms, shall inure to the 
benefit of peace at home and abroad. That he will avoid 
foreign war is very probable, inasmuch as the South 
mortally dreads that. But domestic peace cannot come 
unless Mr. Buchanan violates the letter and spirit of that 
platform on which he stands; unless he throws himself en- 
tirely out of the current of that influence by which, if at 
all, he is to be elected; unless he breaks himself away from 
all those political associates who have made him their rep- 
resentative. In short, the Cincinnati platform is a platform 
every plank of which is made of Southern pine. It stands 
sharply against Northern doctrines. It portends an open 
and undisguised sweep of Southern ideas across our whole 
continent. And unless the North has made up its mind to 
go into the minority, to give up all the inherent advantages 
belonging to free labor, to yield up liberty of speech, and 
freedom of soil, and nationality of legislation, then the 
election of Mr. Buchanan will be the beginning of an ex- 
citement and of a warfare such as has never been dreamed 
of hitherto. , 

Every vote for him is a vote for war. No doubt Mr. 
Buchanan may desire to administer for peace. But when 



202 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

a man has gone out into the rapids, what he wishes has 
very little to do with the question of his going over the 
falls. Elected upon that platform, he cannot choose any 
more what he will do. It is a masked battery. It is a 
platform bristling with artillery. It is full of shells and 
rockets. It will sweep the country with doctrines such as 
never have been known before. It is very silent now. The 
platform lies before the public, as a man-of-war lies peace- 
fully at anchor. Her sides are still. Her decks are quiet. 
Her magazine sleeps. She is peaceful indeed, and yet she 
is stuffed full of materials that only need a quickening, and 
every port-hole will fly open, every cannon blaze, and the 
whole ship belch thunder and lightning with broadsides of 
death. 

If a man wishes to put the torch to the Future, let him 
vote for the Southern men and platform. If men wish 
wilder times, fiercer conflicts, deadlier civil war, let them 
vote for the Southern platform. Northern moderation 
now will be bloodshed by and by. 

The only way to peace is that way which shall chain 
slavery to the place that it now has, and say to the Dragon, 
*' In thine own den thou mayst dwell, and lie down in 
thine own slime. But thou shalt not go forth to ravage 
free territory, nor leave thy trail upon unspotted soil." 

Until liberty controls the institutions of liberty, until 
freemen rule in the land of freedom, we shall have nothing 
but disturbance. And the sooner moderate men grow 
bold, and take a firm and manly course, the sooner will 
conflict and contention die out and leave this fair land to 
prosperity. 

By an ever-acting and inevitable law, the South must 
agitate the country, until a wall is built against her aggres- 
sion. Then the fire will spread no more, but will burn 
within her own sphere. But it will be a purifying fire. 
It will burn up her dross. 

After a time she will find slavery intolerable, and de- 
stroy it for her own salvation. , ' 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY/ 



" Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old 
paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for 
your souls. But they said. We will not walk therein. Also I set watch- 
men over you saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they 
said. We will not hearken Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O con- 
gregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth : behold, I will bring evil 
upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not 
hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it." — ^Jer. vi. 16-19. 



This is a terrible message. It was God's word of old by 
the mouth of his prophet, Jeremiah. The occasion of it 
was a sudden irruption upon Judah of victorious enemies. 
God sent the prophet to reveal the cause of this disaster. 
The prophet declared that God was punishing his people 
because they were selfish and unjust and covetous, and 
because the whole Church, with its ministry, was whelmed 
in the same sins. These mischiefs had been glossed over 
and excused and palliated and hidden, and not healed. 
There had been a spirit that demanded union and quiet 
rather than purity and safety. God, therefore, threatens 
further afflictions, because of the hardness of their hearts; 
and then, — for such always is the Divine lenity, — as it were, 
giving them another opportunity and alternative, he com- 
mands them to seek after God; to look for a better way; 
to search for the old way, the right way, and to walk in it. 

*Preached October 30, 1859, while John Brown was in prison awaiting trial 
for his doings at Harper's Ferry. John Brown's raid took j^lace while the 
country was just organizing for the campaign which resulted in the election 
of Mr. Lincoln. It was at once attempted to turn the occurrence against 
the cause of liberty, by representing it as a symptom and premature de- 
velopment of what was intended by the Republican party against the rights 
of the South. It was necessary that the friends of liberty should be vin- 
dicated, without at the same time taking part, or seeming to take part, 
against those in bonds. 



204 



PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 



I need not stop to point out the remarkable pertinence 
which these things have, in many respects, to our nation in 
the past and to our times in the present. After a long 
silence upon this subject, I avail myself of the state of the 
public mind to make some observations on the present 
state of our land. 

The surprise of a whole nation at a recent event is itself 
the best evidence of the isolation of that event. A burning 
fragment struck the earth near Harper's Ferry. If the 
fragment of an exploding aerolite had fallen down out of 
the air, while the meteor swept on, it would not have 
been more sudden or less apparently connected either with 
a cause or an effect ! 

Seventeen men, white men, without a military base, with- 
out supplies, without artillery, without organization more 
than as a squad of militia, attacked a State, and undertook 
to release and lead away an enslaved race! They do not 
appear to have been called by the sufferers, nor to have been 
welcomed by them. They volunteered a grace, and sought 
to enforce its acceptance. Seventeen white men held two 
thousand in duress. They barricaded themselves, and 
waited until the troops of two States, the employes of a 
great railway, and a portion of the forces of the Federal 
government could, traveling briskly night and day, reach 
them. Then, at one dash, they were snuffed out ! 

I do not wonder that Virginians feel a great deal of mor- 
tification. Everybody is sympathetically ashamed for 
them ! It is quite natural that every effort should be made 
to enlarge the proportions of this escapade, that they may 
hide their weakness and incompetency behind a smartly 
upblown horror ! No one doubts the bravery of Virginians ! 
It needs no praising. But even brave men have panics. 
Courage is sometimes caught at unawares. Certainly it 
strikes us, at a distance, as a remarkable thing, that prison- 
ers three to one more than their captors,* and two thousand 
citizens, should have remained days and nights under the 
fear and control of seventeen white men. Northern cour- 



* Brown captured the arsenal and between forty and fifty of the principal 
inhabitants. 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 



205 



age has been at a discount in the South hitherto. It 
ought hereafter to rise in value, at least in Virginia! 

The diligence which is now shown on the part of many 
public presses to inflame the public mind and infect it with 
fear is quite foolish. The inoculation will not take. The 
North may not be courageous, but it certainly is not silly. 
There is an element of the ludicrous in this transaction 
which I think will effectually stop all panic. 

Seventeen men terrified two thousand brave Virginians 
into two days' submission, — that cannot be got over! The 
common sense of common people will not fail to see through 
all attempts to lifde a natural shame by a bungling make- 
believe that the danger was really greater than it was! The 
danger was nothing, and the fear very great, and the cour- 
age none at all. And nothing can now change the facts ! 
All the newspapers on earth will not make this case appear 
any better. Do what you please, — muster a crowd of sup- 
posed confederates, call the roll of conspirators, include the 
noblest men of these States, and exhibit this imaginary army 
before the people, and, in the end, it will appear that seven- 
teen white men overawed a town of two thousand brave 
Virginians, and held them captives until the sun had gone 
laughing twice around the globe ! 

And the attempt to hide the fear of these surrounded 
men by awaking a larger fear will never do. It is too literal 
a fulfillment, not exactly of prophecy, but of fable; not of 
Isaiah, but of .^sop. 

A fox having been caught in a trap, escaped with the loss 
of his tail. He immediately went to his brother foxes to 
persuade them that they would all look better if they too 
would cut off their tails. They declined. And our two 
thousand friends, who lost their courage in the presence of 
seventeen men, are now making an appeal to this nation to 
lose its courage too,that the cowardice of the few may be hid- 
den in the cowardice of the whole community! It is impos- 
sible. We choose to wear our courage for some time longer. 

As I shall not recur to this epic in Virginia history again 
to-night, I must say a word in respect to the head and 
heart of it. For it all stood in the courage of one man. 



V 



2o6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

An old man, kind at heart, industrious, peaceful, went 
forth, with a large family of children, to seek a new home in 
Kansas. That infant colony held thousands of souls as 
noble as liberty ever inspired or religion enriched. A great 
scowling Slave State, its nearest neighbor, sought to tread 
down this liberty-loving colony, and to dragoon slavery into 
it by force of arms. The armed citizens of a hostile State 
crossed the State lines, destroyed the freedom of the ballot- 
box, prevented a fair expression of public sentiment, cor- 
ruptly usurped law-making power, and ordained by fraud 
laws as infamous as the sun ever saw; assaulted its infant 
settlements with armed hordes, ravaged the fields, destroyed 
harvests and herds, and carried death to a multitude of 
cabins. The United States government had no marines 
for this occasion! No Federal troops posted in the cars 
by night and day for the poor, the weak, the grossly 
wronged men of Kansas. There was an army there that 
unfurled the banner of the Union, but it was on the side of 
the wrong-doers, not on the side of the injured. 

It was in this field that Brown received his impulse. A 
tender father, whose life was in his son's life, he saw his 
first-born seized like a felon, chained, driven across the 
country, crazed by suffering and heat, beaten like a dog by 
the officer in charge, and long lying at death's door! 
Another noble boy, without warning, without offense, un- 
armed, in open day, in the midst of the city, was shot dead! 
No justice sought out the murderers; no United States 
attorney was dispatched in hot haste; no marines or sol- 
diers aided the wronged and weak! 

The shot that struck the child's heart crazed the father's 
brain. Revolving his wrongs, and nursing his hatred of 
that deadly system that breeds such contempt of justice and 
humanity, at length his phantoms assume a slender reality, 
and organize such an enterprise as one might expect from a 
man whom grief had bereft of good judgment. He goes to 
the heart of a Slave State. One man, — and with sixteen 
followers ! he seizes two thousand brave Virginians, and 
holds them in duress ! 

When a great State attacked a handful of weak colonists, 



I 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 207 

the government and nation were torpid, but when seven- 
teen men attacked a sovereign State, then Maryland arms, 
and Virginia arms, and the United States government 
arms, and they three rush against seventeen men. 

Travelers tell us that the Geysers of Iceland — those sin- 
gular boiling springs of the North — may be transported 
with fury by plucking up a handful of grass or turf and 
throwing it into the springs. The hot springs of Virginia 
are of the same kind! A handful of men was thrown into 
them, and what a boiling there has been ! 

But, meanwhile, no one can fail to see that this poor, 
child-bereft old man is the manliest of them all. Bold, 
unflinching, honest, without deceit or evasion, refusing 
to take technical advantages of any sort, but openly 
avowing his principles and motives, glorying in them in 
danger and death, as much as when in security, — that 
wounded old father is the most remarkable figure in this 
whole drama. The Governor, the officers of the State, and 
all the attorneys are pygmies compared with him. 

I deplore his misfortunes. I sympathize with his sor- 
rows. I mourn the hiding or obscuration of his reason, 
I disapprove of his mad and feeble schemes. I shrink 
from the folly of the bloody foray, and I shrink likewise 
from all the anticipations of that judicial bloodshed, which 
doubtless ere long will follow, — for when was cowardice 
ever magnanimous? If they kill the man, it will not be so 
much for treason as for the disclosure of their cowardice ! 

Let no man pray that Brown be spared. Let Virginia 
make him a martyr. Now, he has only blundered. His 
soul was noble; his work miserable. But a cord and a 
gibbet would redeem all that, and round up Brown's fail- 
ure with a heroic success. 

One word more, and that is as to the insecurity of those 
States that carry powder as their chief cargo. Do you 
suppose that if tidings had come to New York that the 
United States armory in Springfield had been seized by 
seventeen men, New Haven, and Hartford, and Stamford, 
and Worcester, and New York, and Boston, and Albany 
would have been thrown into a fever and panic in conse- 



2o8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

quence of the event ? We scarcely should have read the 
papers to see what became of it. We should have thought 
that it was a matter which the Springfield people could 
manage. The thought of danger would not have entered 
into our heads. There would not have been any danger. 
But in a State where there is such inflammable stuff as 
slavery, there is danger, and the people of the South 
know it; and they cannot help it. I do not blame them so 
much for being afraid: there is cause for fear where they 
have such a population as they have down at the bottom 
of society. But what must be the nature of State and do- 
mestic institutions which keep brave men at the point of 
fear all their life long? 

I do not propose, at this time, to express my opinion 
upon the general subject of Slavery. I have elsewhere, 
and often, deliberately uttered my testimony. Reflection 
and experience only confirm my judgment of its immeasur- 
able evils. It is double-edged evil, that cuts both ways, 
wounding master and slave; a pest to good morals; a con- 
sumption of the industrial virtues; a burden upon society 
in its commercial and economic arrangements; a political 
anomaly; and a cause of inevitable degradation in religious 
ideas, feelings, and institutions. All other causes of trouble 
derived from the w^eakness or the wickedness of men put 
together are not half so mischievous to our land as is this 
gigantic evil. 

But it exists in our land, and with a wide-spread and a 
long-established hold. The extent of our duties toward 
the slave and toward the master is another and separate 
question. Our views upon the nature of slavery may be 
right, and our views of duty toward it may be wrong. 

At this time it is peculiarly necessary that all good men 
should be divinely led to act with prudence and efficient 
wisdom. 

Because it is a great sin, because it is a national curse, it 
does not follow that we have a right to say anything or do 
anything about it that may happen to please us. We cer- 
tainly have no right to attack it in any manner that may 
gratify men's fancies or passions. It is computed that there 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 209 

are four million colored slaves in our nation. These dwell 
in fifteen different Southern States, with a population of 
ten million whites. These sovereign States are united to 
us not merely by federal ligaments, but by vital interests, 
by a common national life. And the question of duty 
is not simply what is duty toward the blacks, not what 
is duty toward the whites, but what is duty to each and to 
both united. I am bound by the great law of love to con- 
sider my duties toward the slave, and I am bound by the 
great law of love also to consider my duties toward the 
white man, who is his master ! Both are to be treated with 
Christian wisdom and forbearance. We must seek to ben- 
efit the slave as much as the white man, and the white man 
as really as the slave. We must keep in mind the interest 
of every part, — of the slaves themselves, of the white popu- 
lation, and of the whole brotherhood of States federated 
into national life. And while the principles of liberty and 
justice are one and the same, always and everywhere, the 
wisest method of conferring upon men the benefit of lib- 
erty and justice demands great consideration, according to 
circumstances. 

How to apply an acknowledged principle in practical life 
is a task more difficult than the defense of the principle. 
It is harder to define what would be just in certain emergen- 
cies than to establish the duty, claims, and authority of 
justice. 

Can any light be thrown upon this difficult path ? Some 
light may be shed; but the difficulties of duty can never 
be removed except by the performance of duty. Yet 
some things may be known beforehand, and guide to prac- 
tical solutions. 

I shall proceed to show the wrong way and the right way. 

I. First, we have no right to treat the citizens of the 
South with acrimony and bitterness because they are in- 
volved in a system of wrong-doing. Wrong is to be ex- 
posed. But the spirit of rebuke may be as wicked before 
God as the spirit of the evil rebuked. Simplicity and 
firmness in truth are more powerfuf than any vehement 
bitterness. Speaking the truth in love is the Apostle's pre- 



2IO PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

scription. Some men so love that they will not speak 
painful truth, and some men utter truth so bitterly as to 
destroy love; and both are evil-doers. A malignant speech 
about slavery will not do any good; and, most of all, it will 
not do those any good who most excite our sympathy, — 
the children of bondage. If we hope to ameliorate the con- 
dition of the slave, the first step must not be taken by 
setting the master against him. We may be sure that God 
will not employ mere wrath for wisdom; and that he will 
raise up and send forth, when his day comes, fearless men, 
who shall speak the truth for justice, in the spirit of love. 
Therefore it is a matter not merely of political and secular 
wisdom, but of Christian conscience, that those who have 
at heart the welfare of the erislaved should maintain a 
Christian spirit. This can be done without giving up one 
word of truth or one principle of righteousness. A man 
may be fearless and plain-spoken, and yet give evidence 
of being sympathetic and kind-hearted and loving. 

2. The breeding of discontent among the bondmen of 
our land is not the way to help them. Whatever gloomy 
thoughts the slave's own mind may brood, wc are not to 
carry disquiet to him from without. 

If I could have my way, every man on the globe should be 
a freeman, and at once ! But as they cannot be, w^ill not be, 
for ages, is it best that bitter discontent should be inspired 
in them, or Christian quietness and patient waiting ? If rest- 
lessness would bring freedom, they should never rest. But 
I firmly believe that moral goodness in the slave is the 
harbinger of liberty ! The influence of national freedom 
will gradually reach the enslaved, it will surely inspire that 
restlessness which precedes development. Germination is 
the most silent, but most disturbing, of all natural processes. 
Slaves cannot but feel the universal summer of civilization. 
In this way they must come to restless yearnings. We can- 
not help that, and would not if we could. It is God's sign 
that spring has come to them. The soul is coming up. 
There must be room for it to grow. But this is a very dif- 
ferent thing from surly discontent, stirred up from without, 
and left to rankle in their unenlightened natures. The 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 21 1 

time is rapidly coming when the Southern Christian will 
feel a new inspiration. We are not far removed from a 
revival of the doctrines of Christian manhood and the divine 
rights of men. When this pentecost comes, the slaves will 
be stirred by their own masters. We must work upon the 
master. Make him discontented with slavery, and he will 
speedily take *care of the rest. Before this time comes, any 
attempt to excite discontent among the slaves will work 
mischief to them^ and not good. And my experience — and I 
have had some experience in this matter — is, that men who 
tamper with slaves and incite them to discontent are not 
themselves to be trusted. They are not honest men, unless 
they are fanatical. If they have their reason, they usually 
have lost their conscience. I do not know why it is so, but 
my experience has taught me that men who do such things 
are crafty, and untrustworthy. Conspirators, the world 
over, are bad men. And if I were in the South, I should, 
not from fear of the master, but from the most deliberate 
sense of the injurious effects of it to the slave, never by word 
nor act do anything to excite discontent among those who 
are in slavery. The condition of the slave must be changed, 
but the change cannot go on in one part of the community 
alone. There must be change in the law, change in the 
Church, change in the upper classes, change in the middle 
and in all classes. Emancipation, when it comes, will come 
either by revolution or by a change of public opinion in the 
whole community. No influences, then, are adequate to the 
relief of the slave, which are not of a proportion and power 
sufficient to modify the thought and the feeling of the whole 
community. The evil is not partial. It cannot be cured by 
partial remedies. Our plans must include a universal 
change in policy, feeling, purpose, theory, and practice in 
the whole nation. The application of simple remedies to 
single spots in this great body of disease will serve to pro- 
duce a useless irritation: it will merely fester the hand, but 
not cure the whole body. 

3. No relief will be afforded to the slaves of the South, 
as a body, by any individual; or by any organized plan to 
carry them off, or to incite them to abscond. 



212 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

The more enlightened and liberty-loving among the 
Southern slaves bear too much of their masters' blood not 
to avail themselves of any opening to escape. It is their 
right; it will be their practice. Free locomotion is an in- 
cident of slave-property, which the master must put up 
with. Nimble legs are of much use in tempering the se- 
verity of slavery. If, therefore, an enslaved man, acting 
from the yearnings of his own heart, desires to run away, 
who shall forbid him ? In all the earth, wherever a hu- 
man being is held in bondage, he has a right to slough his 
burden and break his yoke if he can. If he wishes liberty, 
and is willing to dare and suffer for it, let him ! If by his 
manly courage he achieves it, he ought to have it. I 
honor such a man ! 

Nay, if he has escaped and comes to me, I owe him shel- 
ter, succor, defense, and God-speed to a final safety. If there 
were as many laws as there are lines in the Fugitive Slave 
Law, and as many officers as there were beasts in Daniel's 
lion's den, I would disregard every law but God's, and help 
the fugitive ! A man whose own heart has inspired a cour- 
age sufficient to achieve what he desired, shall never come 
to my door and not be made as welcome as my own child. 
I will adopt him for God's sake, and for the sake of the 
Christ who broods over the weak and perishing. Nor am I 
singular in such feelings and purposes. Ten thousand 
men, even in the South, would feel and do the same. A 
man who would not help a fellow-creature flying for his 
liberty must be either a villain or a politician. 

I stand on the outside of this great cordon of darkness, 
and every man that escapes from it, running for his life, 
shall have some help from me, if he comes forth of his own 
free accord; yet I would never incite slaves to run away, or 
send any other man to do it. We have no right to carry 
into the midst of slavery exterior discontent; and for this 
reason: that it is not good for the slaves themselves. It is short- 
sighted humanity, at best, and poor policy for both the 
blacks and the whites. And I say again, I would not trust 
a man that should do it. It would injure the blacks chiefly 
and especially. How it would injure them will appear 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 213 

when I come to speak positively of what is the right way 
to promote the liberty of the enslaved. I may say here, 
however, that the higher a man is raised in the scale of 
being, the harder it will be to hold him in bondage and 
to sell him; while the more he is like an animal, the easier 
it will be to hold him in thrall and harness. The more 
you make slave-holders feel that when they oppress and 
sell a man they are oppressing and selling God's image, 
the harder it will be for them to continue to enslave and 
traffic in human beings. Therefore, whatever you do to 
inspire in the slave high and noble and godlike feelings 
tends to loosen his chains, and whatever shall inspire in 
him base, low, and cruel feelings tightens them. 

Running away is all fair for single cases. It is God's 
remedy for all cases of special hardship. It is the natural 
right of any slave who has manhood enough to resent even 
tolerant bondage. We are not speaking of the remedy for 
individuals, — but the remedy for the whole system. Four 
million men cannot run away, until God sends ten Egyptian 
plagues to help them. And those who go among the slaves 
to stir up discontent will help the hundreds at the expense 
of the millions. Those left behind will be demoralized, 
and, becoming less trustworthy, will grow sullen under in- 
creased severity and vigilance. 

4. Still less would we tolerate anything like insurrection 
and servile war. It would be the most cruel, hopeless, and 
desperate of all conceivable follies, to seek emancipation by 
the sword and by blood. And though I love liberty as my 
own life, though I long for it in every human being, though 
if God, by unequivocal providences, should ordain that it 
should come again as of old, through terrible plagues on the 
first-born, and by other terrors of ill, I should submit to the 
Divine behest; yet, so far as human instrumentality is con- 
cerned, by all the conscience of a man, by all the faith of a 
Christian, and by all the zeal and warmth of a philanthro- 
pist, I protest against any counsels that lead to insurrection, 
servile war, and bloodshed. It is bad for the master, bad 
for the slave, bad for all that are neighbors to them, bad 
for the whole land, — bad from beginning to end ! 



214 



PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 



The right of a race or nation to seize their freedom is not 
to be disputed. It belongs to all men on the face of the 
globe, without regard to complexion. A people have the 
right to change their rulers, their government, their whole 
political condition. This right is neither granted nor limited 
in the New Testament. It is left, as are the functions of 
life, and even existence itself, as a thing not requiring com- 
mands or legislation. But, according to God's Word, so 
long as a man remains a servant, he must obey his master. 
The right of the slave to throw off the control of his master 
is not abrogated. The right of the subject to do this is 
neither defined nor limited. But the use of this right must 
conform to reason, and not to mere impulse. The leaders 
of a people have no right to whelm their helpless followers 
in terrible disaster by inciting them to rebel, under circum- 
stances that afford not the slightest hope that their rebellion 
will rise to the dignity of a successful revolution. The 
nations of Italy are showing great wisdom and fitness in 
their leaders for their work, in that they are quelling fretful 
and irregular outbreak, and holding the people steadfast till 
success shall surely crown uprising revolution. This has 
been the eminent wisdom of that Hungarian exile, Kossuth. 
In spite of all that is written and said against this noble 
man, I stand to my first full faith in him.* The uncrowned 
hero is the noblest man, after all, in Europe ! And his 
statesmanship has been shown in this: that his burning 
sense of the right of his people to be free has not led 
him to incite them to premature, partial, and easily over- 
matched revolt. A man may give his own life rather than 
abide in servitude, but he has no right to lead a whole 
people to slaughter, without the strongest probabilities of 
success. 

If nations were all armed men, it would be different. Sol- 
diers can die. But a nation is made up of other materials 
than armed men; it includes women and children and 



*In December, 1851, Louis Kossuth came to America, and Mr. Beecher 
and Plymouth Church were among his warmest friends and most liberal 
helpers, with what he called " material aid." 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 215 

youth. These are to be considered, and not merely men 
of muscle and knuckle and bone. 

Now, if the Africans in our land were intelligent, if they 
understood themselves, if they had self-governing power, if 
they were able, first to throw off the yoke of adverse laws 
and institutions, and afterwards to defend and build them- 
selves up in a civil state, then they would have just the same 
right to assume their independence that any nation has. 

But does any man believe that this is the case? Does 
any man believe that this vast horde of undisciplined 
Africans, if set free, would have cohesive power enough 
to organize themselves into a government, and main- 
tain their independence ? If there be men who be- 
lieve this, I am not among them. I certainly think t at 
even slaves would be made immeasurably better by liberty; 
but I do not believe they would be made better by liberty 
gained by insurrection or rebellion in the peculiar circum- 
stances which surround them at the South. A regulated lib- 
erty; a liberty possessed with the consent of their masters; 
a liberty under the laws and institutions of the country; a 
liberty which should make them common beneficiaries of 
those institutions and principles which make us wise and 
happy, — such a liberty would be a great blessing to them. 
Freedom, with a law and government, is an unspeakable 
good, but without them it is a mischief. And anything that 
tends to incite among men a vague insurrectionary spirit is 
a great and cruel wrong to them. 

If, in view of the wrongs of slavery, you say that you do 
not care for the master, but only for the slave, I reply, that 
you should care for both master and slave! Though you do 
not care for the fate of the wrong-doing white man, I do! 
But even though your sympathy were only for the slave, 
then for his sake you ought to set your face against any- 
thing like an insurrectionary spirit. 

Let us turn from these specifications of the wrong way 
to some considerations relating to the right way. 

I. If we would benefit the African at the South, we must 
begin at the North. This is to some men the most disagreea- 
ble part of the doctrine of emancipation. It is very easy to 



2l6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

labor for the emancipation of beings a thousand miles off; 
but the practical application of justice and humanity to 
those about us is not so agreeable. The truths of God re- 
specting the rights and dignities of men are just as im- 
portant to free colored men as to enslaved colored men. 
The lever with which to lift the load of Georgia is in New 
York. I do not believe the whole free North can tolerate 
grinding injustice toward the poor and inhumanity toward 
the laboring classes, without exerting an influence unfavora- 
ble to justice and humanity in the South. No one can fail 
to see the inconsistency between our treatment of those 
amongst us who are in the lower walks of life and our pro- 
fessions of sympathy for the Southern slaves. How are the 
free colored people treated at the North ? They are almost 
without education, and with but little sympathy for their ig- 
norance. They are refused the common rights of citizen- 
ship which the whites enjoy. They cannot even ride in the 
cars of our city railroads. They are snuffed at in the house 
of God, or tolerated with ill-concealed disgust. Can the 
black man be a mason in New York? Let him be employed 
as a journeyman, and every Irish lover of liberty that carries 
the hod or trowel would leave at once, or compel him to 
leave ! Can the black man be a carpenter ? There is scarcely 
a carpenter's shop in New York in which a journeyman 
would continue to work, if a black man was employed in it. 
Can the black man engage in the common industries of life ? 
There is scarcely one from which he is not excluded. He is 
crowded down, down, down, through the most menial call- 
ings, to the bottom of society. We tax them, and then re- 
fuse to allow their children to go to our public schools. We 
heap upon them moral obloquy more atrocious than that 
which the master heaps upon the slave. And, notwithstand- 
ing all this, we lift ourselves up to talk to the Southern peo- 
ple about the rights and liberties of the human soul, and es- 
pecially the African soul! It is true that slavery is cruel. 
But it is not at all certain that there is not more love to the 
race in the South than in the North. We do not own them, 
so we do not love them at all. The prejudice of the whites 
against color is so strong that they cannot endure to ride or 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 217 

sit with a black man, so long as they do not own him. As 
neighbors^ they are not to be tolerated, but as property they 
are most tolerable in the house, the church, the carriage, the 
couch ! The African owned, may dwell in America; but un- 
owned, he must be expatriated. Emancipation must be 
jackal to colonization. The choice given to the African is 
plantation or colonization. Our Christian public sentiment 
is a pendulum swinging between owning or exporting the 
colored poor in our midst. 

Whenever we are prepared to show toward the lowest, the 
poorest, and the most despised an unaffected kindness, such 
as led Christ, though the Lord of Glory, to lay aside his 
dignities, and to take on himself the form of a servant, and 
suffer an ignominious death, that he might rescue men from 
ignorance and bondage, — whenever we are prepared to do 
such things as these, we may be sure that the example of the 
North will not be unfelt at the South. Every effort that is 
made in Brooklyn to establish schools and churches for the 
free colored people, and to encourage them to educate them- 
selves and to become independent, is a step toward emanci- 
pation in the South. The degradation of free colored men 
in the North will fortify slavery in the South ! 

2. We must quicken all the springs of feeling in the Free 
States in behalf of human liberty, and create a public senti- 
ment, based upon truths of Christian manhood. For if we 
act to any good purpose on the minds of the South, we must 
do it through a salutary and pure public sentiment in the 
North. When we have corrected our own practice, and set 
an example of the right spirit, then we shall have a position 
from which to exert a beneficial public influence on the 
minds of Southern slaveholders. For this there must be 
full, and free discussion. Under our institutions, public 
opinion is the monarch; and free speech and debate form 
public opinion. 

The air must be vital with the love of liberty. Liberty 
with us must be raised by religion from the selfishness of an 
instinct to the sanctity of a moral principle! We must love 
it for ourselves and demand it for others. Since Christ took 
man's nature, human life has a divine sanctity. We must 



2l8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

inspire in the public mind a profound sense of the rights of 
men founded upon their relations to God. The glory of in- 
telligence, refinement, genius, has nothing to do with men's 
rights. The rice slave, the Hottentot, are as much God's 
children as Humboldt or Chalmers. That they are in deg- 
radation only makes it more imperative upon us to secure 
to them the birthright which in their ignorance they sell 
for a mess of pottage. 

These things must become familiar again to our pulpits. 
Our children must be taught to glow again in our schools 
over the heroic ideals of liberty. Mothers must twine the 
first threads of their children's life with the golden threads 
of these divine truths, and the whole of life must be woven 
to the heavenly pattern of Liberty ! 

What can the North do for the South, unless her own 
heart is purified and ennobled ? When the love of liberty is 
at so low an ebb that churches dread the sound, ministers 
shrink from the topic; when book-publishers dare not pub- 
lish or republish a word on the subject of slavery, cut out 
every living word from school-books, expurgate life-passages 
from Humboldt, Spurgeon, and all foreign authors or teach- 
ers; and when great religious publication Societies, endowed 
for the very purpose of speaking fearlessly the truths which 
interest would let perish, pervert their trust, and are dumb, 
first and chiefly, and articulate only in things that thousands 
of others could publish as well as they, — what chance is 
there that public sentiment, in such a community, will have 
any power with the South ? 

But the end of these things is at hand. A nobler spirit 
is arising. New men, new hearts, new zeals, are coming 
forward, led on by all those signs and auspices that God 
foresends when he prepares his people to advance. This 
work, well begun, must not go back. It must grow, like 
spring, into summer. God will then give it an autumn — 
without a winter. And when such a public sentiment fills 
the North, founded upon religion, and filled with fearless 
love to both the bond and the free, it will work all over 
the continent, and nothing can be hid from the shining 
thereof. 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 219 

3. By all the ways consistent with the fearless asser- 
tion of truth, we must maintain sympathy and kindness 
toward the South. We are brethren; and I pray that no 
fratricidal influences be permitted to sunder this Union. 
There was a time when I thought the body of death would 
be too much for life, and that the North was in danger of 
taking disease from the South, rather than they our health. 
That time has gone past. I do not believe that we shall 
be separated by their act or ours. We have an element 
of healing, which, if we are true to ourselves and our princi- 
ples, and God is kind to us, will drive itself further and fur- 
ther into the nation, until it penetrates and regenerates 
every part. When the whole lump shall have been leav- 
ened thereby, old prejudices will be done away, and new 
sympathies will be created. 

I am for holding the heart of the North right up to the 
heart of the South. Every heart-beat will be, ere long, not 
a blow riveting oppression, but a throb carrying new health. 
Freedom in the North is stronger than slavery in the South. 
We are yet to work for them as the silent spring works for 
us. They are a lawful prey to love. I do not hesitate to 
tell the South what I mean by loving this Union. I mean 
liberty, I mean the decay of slavery, and its extinction. If 
I might speak for the North, I would say to the South: 
" We love you, and hate your slavery. We shall leave no 
fraternal effort untried to deliver you, and ourselves with 
you, from the degradation, danger, and wickedness of this 
system." And for this we cling to the Union. There is 
health in it. 

4. We are to leave no pains untaken, through the Chris- 
tian conscience of the South, to give to the slave himself 
a higher moral status. I lay it down as an axiom, that 
whatever gives more manhood to the slave slackens the 
bonds that bind him, and that whatever lowers him in the 
scale of manhood tightens those bonds. If you wish to 
work for the enfranchisement of the African, seek to make 
him a better man. Teach him to be an obedient servant, 
and an honest, true. Christian man. These virtues are God's 
step-stones to liberty. That man whom Christ first makes 



2 20 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

free has a better chance to be civilly free than any other. 
To make a slave morose, fractious, disobedient, and unwill- 
ing to work is the way to defer his emancipation. We do 
not ask the slave to be satisfied with slavery. But, feeling 
its grievous burden, we ask him to endure it while he must, 
"as unto God, and not unto man;" not because he does 
not love liberty, but because he does love Christ enough 
to show forth His spirit under grievous wrong. Bad slaves 
will never breed respect, sympathy, and emancipation. 
Truth, honor, fidelity, manhood, — these things in the slave 
will prepare him for freedom. It is the low animal condi- 
tion of the African that enslaves him. It is moral enfran- 
chisement that will break his bonds. 

The Pauline treatment is the most direct road to liberty. 
No part of the wisdom of the New Testament seems to me 
more divinely wise than Paul's directions to those in slavery. 
This is the food that servants need now at the South, every- 
where, the world over ! If I lived in the South, I should 
preach these things to slaves, with a firm conviction that so 
I should advance the day of their liberty. I should feel 
that I was carrying them further and further toward' their 
emancipation. There is no disagreement between the true 
spirit of emancipation and the enforcement of every sin- 
gle one of the precepts of the New Testament respecting 
servants. 

5. The things which shall lead to emancipation are not 
so complicated or numerous as people blindly think. A 
few virtues established, a few usages maintained, a few 
rights guaranteed to the slaves, and the system is vitally 
wounded. The right of chastity in the woman, the unblem- 
ished household love, the right of parents in their children, 
— on these three elements stands the whole weight of so- 
ciety. Corrupt or enfeeble these, and there cannot be super- 
incumbent strength. Withhold these rights from savage 
people, and they can never be carried up. They are the 
integral elements of associated human life. We demand, 
and have a right to demand, of the Christian men of the 
South, that they shall revolutionize the moral condition of 
the slaves. 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 221 

I Stand up in behalf of two million women who are with- 
out a voice, to declare that there ought to be found in 
Christianity, somewhere, an influence that shall protect 
their right to their own persons, and that their purity shall 
stand on some other ground than the caprice of their mas- 
ters ! I demand that the Christian Church, both North 
and South, shall bear a testimony in behalf of marriage 
among the slaves, which shall make it as inviolable as mar- 
riage among the whites. It is not to be denied that another 
code of morals prevails upon the plantation than that 
which prevails in the plantation mansion. So long as hus- 
band and wife are marriageable commodities, liable to be 
sold apart, to form new connections, there can be no such 
thing as sanctity in wedlock. 

Let it be known in New York that a man has two wives, 
and there is no church so feeble of conscience that they 
will not instantly eject him; and law will promptly visit 
him with penalties. But the communicants of slave- 
churches not only live with a second while their first com- 
panion is yet alive, but in succession with a third and fourth; 
nor is it any disqualification for church-membership. The 
Church and the State wink at it. It is the commercial 
necessity of the system. If you will sell men, you must 
not be too nice about their moral virtues. 

A wedding among this unhappy people is but a name, — 
a mere form to content their conscience or their love of 
imitating their superiors. Every auctioneer in the com- 
munity has the power to put asunder whom God has joined. 
The bankruptcy of their owner is the bankruptcy of the 
marriage relation in half the slaves on his plantation. 

Neither is there any gospel that has been permitted to 
rebuke these things. There is no church that I have 
ever known in the South that bears testimony against them. 
Neither will the churches in the North, as a body, take 
upon themselves the responsibility of bearing witness 
against them. 

I go further. I declare that there must be a Christian 
public sentiment which shall make the family inviolate. 
Men sometimes say, " It is rarely the case that families are 



2 22 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

separated." It is false ! It is false ! There is not a slave- 
mart that does not bear testimony, a thousand times over, 
against such an assertion. Children are bred like colts and 
calves, and are dispersed like them. 

It is in vain to preach a gospel to slaves that leaves out 
personal chastity in man and woman, or that leaves their 
purity subject to another's control; that leaves out the 
sanctity of the marriage state, and the unity and inviola- 
bility of the family. And yet no gospel has borne such a 
testimony in favor of them as to arouse the conscience of the 
South ! If ministers will not preach liberty to the captive, 
they ought at least to preach the indispensable necessity of 
household virtue ! If they will not call upon the masters 
to set their slaves free, they should at least proclaim a 
Christianity that protects woman, childhood, and house- 
hold ! 

The moment that woman stands self-poised in her own 
purity, the moment man and woman are united together 
by bonds which cannot be sundered during their earthly 
life, the moment the right of parents to their children is 
recognized, — that moment there will be a certain sanctity 
and protection of the eternal and Divine government rest- 
ing upon father and mother and children, and the death- 
blow of slavery will have been struck ! You cannot make 
slavery profitable after these three conditions are secured. 
The moment you make slaves serfs, they are no longer 
a legal tender, and are uncurrent in the market; and fami- 
lies are so cumbrous, so difficult to support, so expensive, 
that owners are compelled, from reasons of pecuniary inter- 
est, to discontinue the system. 

Therefore, if you will only disseminate the truths of the 
Gospel, if you will put timid priests out of the way, and 
lying Societies whose cowardice slanders the Gospel which 
they pretend to diffuse, and if you will bring a whole solar 
flood of truth to bear upon the practical morals of the 
slave, you will begin to administer a remedy, if God designs 
to cure it by moral means, which will inevitably heal the 
evil. 

6. Among the means to be employed for promoting the 



THE NATION'S DUTY TO SLAVERY. 223 

liberty of the slave we must not fail to include the power 
of true Christian prayer. When slavery shall cease, it will 
be by such instruments and influences as shall exhibit 
God's hand and heart in the work. Its downfall will have 
been achieved so largely through natural causes, so largely 
through reasons as broad as nations, that it will be apparent 
to all men that God led on the emancipation; man being only 
one element among the many. Therefore, we have every 
encouragement to direct our prayers without ceasing to God 
that he will restrain the wrath of man, inspire men with 
wisdom, overrule all evil laws, and control the commerce 
of the globe, so that the poor may be protected, that the 
bond may become free, that the ignorant may become wise, 
that the master and slave may respect each other, and that 
at length we may be an evangelized and Christian people. 
May God, in his own way and time, speed the day ! 



against a compromise of 
principle; 



" And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. 
And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was writ- 
ten, The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to 
preach the Gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, 
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, 
to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the 
Lord." — Luke iv. 17-19. 

These words are remarkable, to-day, for their meaning 
and for their historical position. The first sermon which 
Christ made, upon entering his public ministry, was this 
one at Nazareth, where he had been brought up. That he 
chose these words in entering upon his mission — these 
words, of all the Law, of all the Psalms, and of all the 
Prophets — gives them peculiar significancy. And, when 
we consider their contents, they become yet more memo- 
rable, since they were the charter and index of his mis- 
sion, — the text not only of his sermon, but of his life. 
Christ came to save the world, — not laws, not govern- 
ments, not institutions, not dynasties, but Xh^ people. The 
fulfillment of his mission is to be looked for in the condi- 
tion of nationalities and the character of peoples. Though 
peace breathe balm over all the world, and every law is 
obeyed, and every government rides among the people as 
a man-of-war dressed for holiday upon a tranquil sea, there 
is no reason for rejoicing if the people are ignorant and 
their capacities are undeveloped, if they are mean and 
sordid, and their morals, like a Chinese foot, are cramped 
too small to walk upon. But though there be wars and 
rumors of war, revolutions and tumults, the world is pros- 



* Thanksgiving Day, November 29, 1S60. 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 225 

parous if by these convulsions the race is freed from op- 
pression, thoroughly aroused, and incited to bolder enter- 
prise and to nobler moral character. 

We are, then, to study the advance of Christ's kingdom 
in the whole aspect of the world. The Church is of the 
people. God's Church includes the whole human race. 
Our separate churches are but doors to the grand spirit- 
ual interior. The good men who love God and man with 
overruling affection, of all nations, and of every tongue, 
are the true Church. 

To-day we are assembled to give thanks for national 
mercies. I need not remind you of the year that is closing. 
Who knew, when January set her cold, calm face toward 
the future, that she was the herald of such a summer ? 
When was there ever a year so fertile ? so propitious to all 
industry ? It has been a procession of rejoicing months, 
flower-wreathed and fruit-laden, — a very holiday year ! 

The soil awoke with new ardor; everything that lived by 
the soil felt the inspiration. Every root, and every blade, 
and every stem, and every bough has this year tasked it- 
self for prodigal bounty. Except a narrow strip, this con- 
tinent has been so blessed with husbandry as to make 
this year memorable even among years hitherto most em- 
inent. The meadow, the tilled fields, the grazing past- 
ures, the garden, the vineyard, the orchard, the very fence- 
row berry-bushes and wild wall-vines, have been clothed 
with unexampled bounty and beauty. Nature seems to 
have lacked messengers to convey her intents of kind- 
ness, and the summer, like a road surprised with quad- 
ruple freights, has not been able to find conveyance for 
all its treasures. The seas have felt the divine ardor. 
The fishermen never reaped such harvests from the 
moist furrows of the ocean as this year. These husband- 
men of the sea, who reap where they have not sowed and 
grow rich upon harvests which they have not tilled, have 
this year put in the crooked hook for their sickle with 
admiring gladness for the strange and unwonted abund- 
ance of the deep. 

All the sons of God rejoice, and all good men rejoice. It 



2 26 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

needs but one element to complete the satisfaction. If 
we could be sure that this is God's mercy, meant for good, 
and tending thereto, we should have a full cup to-day. 
That satisfaction is not denied us. The Mayor of New 
York, in a public proclamation, in view of this prodigal 
year, that has heaped the poor man's house with abund- 
ance, is pleased to say that there is no occasion apparent 
to him, for thanksgiving. We can ask no more. When 
bad men grieve at the state of public affairs, good men 
should rejoice. When infamous men keep fast, righteous 
men should have thanksgiving. God reigns and the Devil 
trembles. Amen. Let us rejoice ! * 

But it is not now to these topics that I shall confine my 
remarks. I propose to glance at other reasons for thanks- 
giving. 

I. The advantage and increasing influence of nations 
which in the main tend to conserve human liberty, and 
the decadence and dwindling of those nations that have 
flourished by exaction and tyranny, is matter of gratula- 



*Mayor Fernando Wood's proclamation is such a curiosit)' of wicked- 
ness, even in the annals of New York city, that we append it : — 

" Mayor's Office, New York, November 24, 1S60. 

" Proclamation. — In accordance with custom and the proclamation of 
the Governor of the State, it becomes my duty, as Mayor, to recommend 
to the people of this city the observance of THURSDAY, the 29th inst , 
as a day of ' Thanksgiving and Prayer.' 

" While in my judgment the country, either in its political, commercial, 
or financial aspect, presents no features for which we should be thankful, 
we are yet called upon by every consideration of self-preservation to offer 
up to the Father of all mercies devout and fervent prayer, for his inter- 
position and protection from the impending evils which threaten our insti- 
tutions and the material interests of the people. 

" Therefore, acknowledging our dependence on Almighty God, and 
deeply sensible of our own unworthiness, let the day set apart as Thanks- 
giving be observed by the people of this city as one of humiliation and 
supplication, — not omitting in our prayers the expression of the hope that 
those who have, in violation of the Federal compact, unpatriotically and 
unwisely influenced these injuries upon us, may be the only sufferers by 
their own wickedness and folly. 

" [l. s.] Given under my hand and seal, this day and year aforesaid. 

" Fernando Wood, Mayor." 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 227 

tion. It should make good men glad when wicked men 
and wicked nations grow weak. 

2. The emergence of the common people to that degree 
of political power that makes it necessary now for the 
whole of Western Europe to ask their permission for the 
establishment of any throne or monarchy is cheering and 
auspicious. Crowns were once made of gold beaten out 
on the people's backs. Now the strongest crowns are 
made of paper, — the paper votes of the common people. 
Therein we rejoice, and will rejoice. 

3. The resurrection of Italy is another memorable event of 
the year. I see as many tokens of a Divine presence in Italy 
as of old there were in the emancipation and conduct of the 
Israelites from Egypt. That such a conjunction of events 
should have taken place; that such a monarch as Victor 
Emmanuel, who almost reconciles republicans to kings, 
should have sat waiting; that such a consummate statesman, 
of noblest patriotism, as Cavour, should have been prepared 
and waiting; that such a hero, simple, true, pure, disinter- 
ested, self-sacrificing, skillful, and lion-like, as Garibaldi, 
should have come at the hour, are marks of the planning of 
God. Men never devise such combinations. It would have 
been significant had either of these men come singly. That 
all should have come together, — a soldier to beat down the 
old despotism, a statesman to organize the new liberty, a just 
and patriot king to preside over the people's government, 
and a people, divided for centuries, but now at last united, 
— this reveals the mind and will of God. Let us rejoice ! 

4. The growing moderation of the Russian monarchy, the 
quiet improvement of the people, the emancipation of the 
serfs, ought to engage the attention and receive the sym- 
pathy of every Christian people. There is a great work 
begun in Russia. This gigantic nation, the antithesis of 
America politically and geographically, is, like her, almost 
half a globe of herself. The end we cannot now even sus- 
pect. Prophets are dead. God no longer tells beforehand 
what he is going to do. But, by the clearing that has been 
made for the foundations, by the materials that are gather- 
ing, and by the workmen that are employed, we judge that 



228 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

no mean structure is about to arise to the glory of God. 
There is an immense History now in birth. May the un- 
measured future be for Humanity, Justice, and Piety ! 

5. In the rest of the world there are signs, but more re- 
mote, of good. Heathen nations are growing weaker, 
Christian nations are growing stronger. The nations of 
Heathenism are imbecile. The nations of Christianity are 
of vigorous stock, and have a future. Already Christian 
nations rule the world. Who may war, how long, for what, 
with whom, depends upon the will of Christian peoples. 
There is a Christian police around this globe ! 

6. Our own land has not been behind. In this march of 
nations our country has kept step. We know it by the vic- 
tory of ideas, by the recognition of principles instead of 
mere policies, by the ascendency of justice, and by the 
ratifying rage of all who love oppression and oppressors. 

To-day should not be profaned by partisan congratula- 
tions;* but we should be ungrateful to God, who has guided 
us through peril and darkness, and at length brought us 
forth into illustrious victory, if we did not to-day remember, 
with profound gratitude and devout thanksgiving, the resur- 
rection of the spirit of liberty from the graves of our fathers! 

The tree of life, whose leaves were for the healing of the 
nations, has been evilly dealt with. Its boughs have been 
lopped, and its roots starved till its fruit is knurly. Upon 
its top had been set scions of bitter fruits, that grew and 
sucked out all the sap from the better branches. Upon its 
trunk the wild boar of the forest had whetted his tusks. 

But now again it blooms. Its roots have found the river, 
and shall not want again for moisture; the grafts of poison- 
ous fruits have been broken off or have been blown out; 
mighty spearmen have hunted the wild swine back to his 
thickets, and the hedge shall be broken down no more 
round about it. The air is fragrant in its opening buds, the 
young fruit is setting. God has returned and looked upon 
it, and behold, summer is in all its branches ! 

To some it may seem that the light in this picture is too 

*The national election of November, 1S60, had resulted in the choice of 
Abraham Lincoln as President, practically giving the national voice for the 
non-extension of slavery. 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 229 

high, and that the background is not dark enough. I do 
not wish you to think that the background is not dark; for 
it is. There is excitement. There is brewing mischief. 
The clouds lie lurid along the Southern horizon. The Car- 
ibbean Sea, that breeds tornadoes and whirlwinds, has 
heaped up treasures of storms portentous, that seem about 
to break. Let them break ! God has appointed their 
bounds. Not till the sea drives back the shore, and the At- 
lantic submerges the Continent, will this tumult of an 
angry people move the firm decrees of God. He who 
came to open prison doors, to deliver captives, to loose 
those that are bound, — he it is that is among us. We are 
surrounded by airy hosts greater than those w^hich the 
prophet of old saw filling the mountains. God is with us. 
The very rage of wickedness shows his presence. 

While we tremble, then, let us rejoice; not triumph, nor 
boast, nor make invidious comparisons, nor throw fuel of 
passions into the flames already too hot. But, with a sober, 
temperate, and beneficent joy, let us give thanks to God, 
that he has begun to recall this nation from a course that 
would have wrought utter destruction; and that now, 
though waves are beating, and the tempest is upon the 
ship, she has changed her course, and heads right away 
from the breakers and the sand ! 

But be sure that, in these times, there can be no safe navi- 
gation except that which clings to great universal principles. 
Selfish interests, if they are our pilots, will betray us. Vain- 
glory will destroy us. Pride will wreck us. Above all, the 
fear of doing right will be fatal. But Justice and Liberty 
are pilots that do not lose their craft. They steer by a 
divine compass. They know the hand that holds the winds 
and the storms. It is always safe to be right; and our busi- 
ness is not so much to seek peace as to seek the causes of 
peace. Expedients are for an hour, but principles are for 
the ages. Just because the rains descend and winds blow, 
we cannot afford to build on shifting sands. Nothing can 
be permanent and nothing safe in this exigency that does 
not sink deeper than politics or money. We must touch 
the rock, or we shall never have firm foundations. 



230 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

I. Our prosperity had its beginning and continuance in 
Natural Laws. God's will in nature and in human society 
is the source of human strength and human wisdom. No 
matter how many are with you, if your councils are in the 
face of divine principles. Peace, regardless of equity, is a 
treacherous sleep, whose waking is death. It is not half so 
necessary to have a settlement as it is to have a right settle- 
ment. In tl:e end, right political economy will work out 
prosperous national economy; and if for want of faith in 
the safety of rectitude you abandon sound and proved prin- 
ciples, or let them go by default, all your good intentions 
will not save you from national misrule and national wast- 
ing and destruction. The mariner who should take refuge 
in the Maelstrom, thinking it a safe harbor, would learn 
quickly that good intentions are good follies when men run 
against natural law. And to think that this nation has been 
prospered merely on account of the skill, the wisdom, or 
the arrangements and combinations of men, is the worst of 
infidelities. While papers and parties are in full outcry, 
and nostrums are advertised, and scared politicians are at 
their wits' ends, (without having gone far, either,) and men 
of weak minds are beside themselves, and imbeciles stand 
doubting in the streets, know ye that the way of peace is 
simple, accessible, and easy. Be still. Stand firm ! Have 
courage to wait. Money is insane. Fear is death. Faith 
in justice, and in rectitude, and trust in God, will work 
out safety. The worst is over. Our Northern apathy to 
freedom and our greed of commerce are a thousand times 
more dangerous than Southern rage and threat. Moral 
bankruptcy will ruin us all. No other bankruptcies will 
harm us ! 

Let us have firm courage, kindness of temper, willingness 
to make concessions in things of mere policy, but no con- 
cession of principles, no yielding of moral convictions, no 
paltering with our consciences. Thirty pieces of silver 
bought Christ and hung Judas. If you sell your convictions 
to Fear, you give yourself to a vagabond. If you sell your 
conscience to Interest, you traffic with a fiend. The fear of 
doing right is the grand treason in times of danger. When 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 231 

you consent to give up your convictions of justice, human- 
ity, and liberty, for the sake of tranquillity, you are like 
men who buy a treacherous truce of tyrants by giving up 
their weapons of war. Cowards are the food of despots. 

When a storm is on the deep, and the ship labors, men 
throw over the deck-load; they cast forth the heavy 
freights, and ride easier as their merchandise grows less. 
But in our time men propose to throw overboard the com- 
pass, the charts, the chronometer, and sextant, but to keep 
the freight ! 

For the sake of a principle our fathers dared to defy the 
proudest nation on the globe. They suffered. They con- 
quered. We are never tired of praising them. But when 
we are called to stand firm for principle, we tremble, we 
whine, we evade duty, and shuffle up a compromise, by 
which we may sell our conscience, and save our pocket. 

It is rank infidelity, and, at such a time as this, stupend- 
ous infatuation, to suppose that the greatness of this nation 
ever sprung from the wisdom of expediency, instead of the 
power of settled principles. Your harbor did not make you 
rich; you made the harbor rich. Your ships did not crea^ 
your commerce; your commerce created your ships; and 
you created your commerce. Your stores did not make 
traffic. Your factories did not create enterprise. Your 
firms, your committees, your treaties, and your legislation 
did not create national prosperity. Our past greatness 
sprung from our obedience to God's natural and moral 
law. We had men trained to courage, to virtue, to wisdom. 
And manhood, — manhood, — manhood, — exercised in the 
fear of God, has made this nation. Men are God's vice- 
gerents; and if they will govern as he governs, then they 
shall be creators, too, in this world. The reason we have 
prospered in days past is not that we have known how 
to duck and dodge and trim; it is not that we have known 
all the minute ways of microscopic statesmanship: it is 
because we have known just enough to see the way in 
which natural law and God's kingdom were going, and 
to follow them. It is a simple thing; it is no secret; 
and accursed be he that counsels the people to seek peace 



232 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and prosperity by abandoning the causes of it, and that 
leads them into destruction by leading them into the arms 
of a tinseled folly ! 

II. Let no man be foolishly fearful of excitement. Our 
age marks the growth of the world by this: that excite- 
ment is now wholesome. When men low down in the scale 
begin to be stirred, the most active part is excited, which 
is passion. But when men have outgrown barbarism, and 
live in moral and intellectual elements, then excitement 
rouses up the higher nature. Among a savage people, 
excitement works downward and rages; among a Christian 
and civilized people, it works upward and toward peace. 
Excitements among a thinking people tend to clearer 
convictions, to surer intuitions, to more heroic purposes, 
and loftier enthusiasms. Do not be afraid because the 
community teems with excitement. Silence and death 
are dreadful. The rush of life, the vigor of earnest men, 
the conflict of realities, invigorate, cleanse, and estab- 
lish truth. Our only fear should be lest we refuse God's 
work. He has appointed this people, and our day, for one 
of those world-battles on which ages turn. Ours is a piv- 
otal period. The strife is between a dead past and a liv- 
ing future; between a wasting evil and a nourishing good; 
between Barbarism and Civilization. 

The condition of the common people always measures 
the position of any nation on the scale of civilization. 
The condition of Work always measures the character 
of the common people. It is not where the head is, 
but where the feet are, that determines a nation's posi- 
tion. By ascertaining where the working people are in 
the North and in the South, you can determine the re- 
spective positions of these two sections of our countr3^ 
I need not tell you what is the relative position of these 
two extremes and opposites on any scale of Christian civil- 
ization. 

The Southern States and the Northern alike found poi- 
sonous seed sown in colonial days. The North chose to 
weed it out. The South determined to cultivate it, and see 
what it would bear. The harvest-time has now come. 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 233 

We are reaping what we sowed. They sowed the wind, 
and they are about to reap the whirlwind. Let us keep 
in view the causes of things. Our prosperity is the fruit 
of the seed that we sowed, and their fears, their alarms, 
their excitements, their fevers, their tumults, and their 
rages are the fruit of the seed that they sowed. Ours 
is wholesome; theirs is poisonous. All, now, that we de- 
mand is, that each side shall reap its oivn harvest. 

It is this that convulses the South. They wish to reap 
fruits of liberty from the seed of slavery. They wish to 
have an institution which sets at naught the laws of God, 
and yet be as refined and prosperous and happy as we are, 
who obey these laws; and since they cannot, they demand 
that we shall make up to them what they lack. The real 
gist of the controversy, as between the greatest number of 
Southern States and the North, is simply this. The South 
claims that the United States government is bound to 
make slavery as good as liberty for all purposes of national 
life. That is the root of their philosophy. They are to 
carry on a wasting system, a system that corrupts social 
life in its very elements, to pursue a course of inevitable 
impoverishment, and yet, at every decade of years, the 
government is, by some new bounty and privilege, to 
make up to them all the waste of this gigantic mistake ! 
And our national government has been made a bribed 
judge, sitting on the seat of authority in this land, to de- 
clare bankruptcy as good as honesty; to declare wicked- 
ness as good as virtue; and to declare that there shall 
be struck, from period to period, a rule that will bring 
all men to one common municipal and communal pros- 
perity, no matter what may be the causes that are work- 
ing out special evils in them. 

The Southern States, then, have organized society around 
a rotten core, — slavery: the North has organized society 
about a vital heart, — liberty. At length both stand ma- 
ture. They stand in proper contrast. God holds them 
up to ages and to nations, that men may see the difference. 
Now that there is a conflict, I ask which is to yield ? 
Causes having been true to effects, and effects true to 



234 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

causes; these gradually unfolding commercial and political 
and moral results having been developed in the two great 
opposing extremes of this country, the time has come 
in which they are so brought into contact that the prin- 
ciple of the one or the principle of the other must yield. 
Liberty must discrown her fair head; she must lay her opal 
crown and her diamond scepter upon the altar of Op- 
pression; or else Oppression must shrink, and veil its head, 
and depart. Which shall it be ? Two queens are not to 
rule in this land, one black and the other white; one from 
below and the other from above. Two influences are not 
to sit in culminated power at the seat of influence in this 
nation, one dragging and pulling toward the infernal, and 
the other drawing and exciting toward the supernal. No 
nation could stand the strain to which it would be sub- 
jected under such a state of things. 

There is a Divine impulsion in this. Those who resist 
and those who strive are carried along by a stream might- 
ier than mere human volition. Whether men have acted 
well or ill, is not now the question; but simply this: On 
which side will you be found? This controversy will go on. 
No matter what you do, God will carry out his own provi- 
dences with you or without you, by you or against you. 
You cannot hide or run away, or shift the question, or stop 
the trial. Complaints are useless, and recriminations 
foolish and wicked. 

The distinctive idea of the Free States is Christian civ- 
ilization, and the peculiar institutions of civilization. The 
distinctive idea of the South is barbaric institutions. In 
the North mind, and in the South force, rules. In the 
North every shape and form of society in some way rep- 
resents liberty. In the South every institution and ele- 
ment of society is tinged and pervaded with slavery. The 
South accepts the whole idea of slavery, boldly and con- 
sistently. The North will never have peace till she with 
equal boldness accepts liberty. 

While liberty and slavery are kept apart, and only run 
upon parallels, there may be peace. But there is no way 
in which they can be combined; there is no unity made 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 235 

up of these deadly antagonisms. And all devices, and cun- 
ning arrangements, and deceitful agreements, are false and 
foolish. 

The truth that men cannot hush, and that God will not 
have covered up, is the irreconcilable difference between 
liberty and slavery ! Which will you advocate and defend ? 

There are three courses before us: — 

1. To go over to the South. 

2. To compromise principles. 

3. To maintain principles upon just and constitutional 
grounds, and abide the issue. 

1. Shall we, then, obliterate from our statute-books every 
law for liberty ? Shall we rub down and efface every clear 
and distinctive feature of liberty ? Shall we assume that 
one is just as good as the other, — slavery and freedom? 
Are we, for the sake of peace, to go over to the South, 
yield our convictions, and our moral influences, and our 
whole soul and body of teaching and conviction ? 

This course is not to be thought of for a moment, what- 
ever it may be theoretically considered. As a matter of 
fact, you know, and I know, and everybody knows, that 
there will be no change in the convictions of the North. 
We have reaped too bountifully from the seed we have 
sown, to change. Our method of moral and political til- 
lage will be the same as heretofore. 

2. Shall we then compromise? We are told that Satan 
appears under two forms: that when he has a good fair 
field, he is out like a lion, roaring and seeking whom he 
may devour; but that when he can do nothing more in 
that way, he is a serpent, and sneaks in the grass. And 
so, it is Slavery open, bold, roaring, aggressive, or it is 
Slavery sneaking in the grass, and calling itself Compro- 
mise. It is the same devil under either name. 

If by compromise is only meant forbearance, kindness, 
well-wishing, conciliation, fidelity to agreements, a conces- 
sion in things, not principles, why, then we believe in 
compromise; — only that is not compromise, interpreted 
by the facts of our past history! We honestly wish no 
harm to the South or its people: we honestly wish them 



236 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

all benefit. We wish no harm to their commerce; none 
to their manufactures; none to their husbandry; none to 
their schools and colleges; none to their churches and fam- 
ilies; none to their citizens, who are bone of our bone and 
blood of our blood, and who are in many eminent re- 
spects united to us in a common historic glory. We are 
far from wishing them diminution or feebleness; so far 
from it we most heartily and sincerely, and with much 
more earnestness than they reciprocate, wish them rid- 
dance of their trouble. We neither envy nor covet their 
territory. We are not jealous of their honors. We would 
that they were doubled, and doubly purified. All that 
belongs to the South; all that with liberalest construction 
was put in the original bond, shall be hers. Her own 
institutions were made inviolate in all her States. The 
basis of representation in the South was made broader 
than in the North, and property, as well as citizens, sends 
representatives to Washington. We will not complain. The 
common revenue and the common force of the nation pro- 
tect them against intestine revolt. Let it be so. The Con- 
stitution gives them liberty to retake their fugitive slaves 
wherever they can find them. Very well. Let them. But 
when the Congress goes beyond the Constitution, and de- 
mands, on penalty, that citizens of free States shall help, 
and render back the flying slave, we give a blunt and une- 
quivocal refusal. We are determined to break any law 
that commands us to enslave or re-enslave a man, and we 
are willing to take the penalty. But that was not in the 
original bond. That is a parasitic egg, laid in the Con- 
stitution by corrupt legislation or by construction. 

We do not ask to molest the South in the enjoyment 
of her own institutions. But we will not be made consta- 
bles to slavery, to run and catch, to serve writs, and return 
prisoners. No political hand shall rob her. We will de- 
fend her coast; we will guard her inland border from all 
vexations from without; and in good faith, in earnest friend- 
ship, in fealty to the Constitution and in fellowship with 
the States, we will, and with growing earnestness to the 
end, fulfill every just duty, every honorable agreement. 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 237 

and every generous act, within the limits of truth and 
honor; all that, and no more, — no more, though the heav- 
ens fall, — no more, if States unclasp their hands, — no more, 
if they raise up violence against us, — no more! 

We have gone to the end. There is no need of com- 
promise in this matter, then. It is a plain, simple matter. 
It is never mystified except when bad men have bad ends 
to accomplish, and bring up a mist over it. 

Let us look things right in the face, then, and speak 
some plain truths. We are approaching times when men 
will not hear what they will listen to now; so let us drop 
the seed beforehand. 

I. The secret intentions of those men who are the chief 
fomenters of troubles in the South cannot in anywise be 
met by compromise. They dread as much as we hate it. 
What do those men that are really at the bottom of this 
conspiracy mean ? Nothing more or less than this: South- 
ern empire for slavery, and the re-opening of the slave- 
trade as a means by which it shall be fed. Free commerce 
and enslaved work is their motto. They will not yet say 
it aloud. But that is the whispered secret of men in Caro- 
lina, and men outside of Carolina. Their secret purpose 
is to sweep westward like night, and involve in the cloud 
of their darkness all Central America, and then make Af- 
rica empty into Central America, thus changing the moral 
geography of the globe. And do you suppose any com- 
promise will settle that design, or turn it aside, when they 
have made you go down on your knees, and they stand 
laughing while you cry with fear because you have been 
cozened and juggled into a blind helping of their mon- 
strous wickedness ? 

They mean slavery. They mean an Empire of Slavery. 
They don't any longer talk of the evil of slavery. It is 
a virtue, a religion ! It is justice and divine economy ! 
Slaves are missionaries. Slave-ships bring heathen to 
plantation - Christianity. They imagine unobstructed 
greatness when servile hands shall whiten the plains from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific with cotton. Carolina despises 
compromise. She means no such thing as liberty. She 



238 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

does not believe in the word. It is rubbed out. It is 
gone from her constitution and from her Bible. Its spirit 
is departed from her legislature and her church. 

And do you think, poor simple peeping sparrow, that 
you can build your poor moss and hair nest of compro- 
mise on the face of the perpendicular cliff, that towers a 
thousand feet high, with the blackness of storms sweeping 
round its top, and the thunder of a turbulent ocean break- 
ing upon its base, — and God, more terrible than either, 
high above them, meaning Justice and Retribution ! 

2. But in so far as those States are concerned that are 
contiguous to Carolina, and do not mean these things, 
even for them compromise can never reach, nor even any 
longer mollify, the causes of complaint; for I hold that 
the causes are inherent in them, not in us. And they are 
endless. If you cure one, another will spring up in its 
place. You cannot compromise with them except by giv- 
ing up your own belief, your own principles, and your 
own honor. Moral apostasy is the only basis on which 
you can build a compromise that will satisfy the South ! 

No compromise will do good that does not go back to 
the nature of things, and change moral qualities. To be 
of any use, compromise must make the slaves contented, 
slavery economical, Slave States as prosperous as Free 
States. Compromise must shut the mouth of free speech, 
or it will send the shafts of truth vibrating into the midst 
of slavery. Compromise must cure the intolerance of the 
plantation, the essential tyranny of slave-owners. It must 
make evil as prosperous as good, enforced drudgery as 
fruitful as free labor. 

What compromise can there be between sickness and 
health ? Between violence and peace ? Between speech 
for liberty and speech for despotism ? There may be 
peace between opposites, but no harmony, no compromise. 
If the South is fixed in her servile institutions, the North 
must be equally firm in her principles of liberty. 

You cannot prevent, in the present state of this land, the 
departure of the children of oppression. You might as 
well attempt to prevent the tides of the Atlantic ocean. 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 239 

You. might as well attempt to prevent vegetation in the 
tropics. Till the heavens be no more, and their orbs cease 
to draw, men will aspire, and will follow aspiration. There 
is too much light in the North, and even in the darkness 
of the plantation, to keep men in slavery. When one man 
gains his freedom, twenty men will know it, and to gain 
theirs will do what he did. Every hour there will be men 
who will take their life in their hands and risk all for lib- 
erty. It is of no use to tell the South that it shall not 
be so. It is of no use to whisper to them, and say, "Your 
trouble shall cease; we will fix this matter to your satis- 
faction." God never made brick or trowel by which to 
patch up that door of deliverance. By night and by day 
slaves will flee away and escape. 

Compromise is a most pernicious sham. To send com- 
promises to the South would be like sending painted 
bombs into the camp of an enemy, which, though harm- 
less in appearance, would blow up and destroy them. 
Suppose you tell the people there that when their fugi- 
tives come North they shall be surrendered ? Will you 
not please to catch them first ? You know you cannot. 
There are five hundred men that run through the North- 
ern States where there is one that stops or is turned 
back. They know it, you know it, we all know it ! The 
radical nature of the feelings of the North is such that 
they will hurry on the black man and trip his hunter. 
If the managers of parties, the heads of conservative 
committees, say to the South, " Be patient with us a little 
longer, do not punish us yet, let down the rod and the 
frown, spare us for a short season, and we will see that 
your slaves are returned to you," do you suppose there 
will be a fulfillment of the promise ? You know there will 
not. I know there will not. I would die myself, cheer- 
fully and easily, before a man should be taken out of 
my hands when I had the power to give him liberty, and 
the hound was after him for his blood. I would stand 
as an altar of expiation between slavery and liberty, know- 
ing that through my example a million men would live. 
A heroic deed, in which one yields up his life for others, 



240 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

is his Calvary. It was the lifting up of Christ on that 
hill-top that made it the loftiest mountain on the globe. 
Let a man do a right thing with such earnestness that he 
counts his life of little value, and his example becomes 
omnipotent. Therefore it is said that the blood of the 
martyrs is the seed of the Church. There is no such seed 
planted in this world as good blood. 

I see that my words are being reported; and as free 
speech may get into Charleston, some men there may see 
what I say; and let me say this to my Southern brethren: 
We mean to observe the Constitution, and keep every 
compact into which we have entered. There are men that 
would deceive you. They are your enemies and ours 
alike. They would tell lies to you, but we will not stand 
up and indorse them. I tell you that as long as there are 
these Free States; as long as there are hills in which men 
can hide, and valleys through which they can travel; as 
long as there is a loaf in the cabin, and water in the cruse; 
as long as there is blood in the veins, and humanity in the 
heart, — so long the fugitive will not want for sympathy 
and help to escape ! 

I say, again, that we are bound, as men of truth and 
conscience, to look this matter in the face, and ask, " Is 
there any benefit to be expected from compromises?" My 
friends, we are not reasoning about a matter of which we 
have had no experience. From the beginning we have 
been living on compromises. Now there is a history, 
and we can make scientific inductions from facts, and 
know the results of certain courses. Do you suppose that 
if, knowing what you know now, you had sat in the orig- 
inal Convention to frame the Constitution, you would 
have made compromises ? Persons say, "Are you wiser 
than your fathers ? " Yes ! A man that is not wiser than 
his father, ought not to have had such a father, if his father 
was wise ! Our fathers, when they laid the foundations of 
that structure, did the best that the wisdom of that time 
would enable them to do; and they were wise men, — 
much wiser, doubtless, for their time, than we are for ours. 
But, nevertheless, we may know now, better than they 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRIXCIPLE. 241 

did then, what their wisest course would have been. When 
Carolina refused to come into the Confederacy except on 
the ground of certain favors to slavery, then was the time 
to have said to her, " Stay out." 

Do you suppose that when Carolina infamously said, 
" I will not come in unless you give me leave to traffic in 
slaves from 1790 till 1808," — do you suppose that then it 
was wise for our fathers to give her what she demanded ? 
I do not blame them; they acted up to the best light they 
had; but if we, knowing the facts that we know now, 
had done what they did, we should have been infamous. 

When, later, the compromise of 1850 was set on foot, 
there were not wanting, as there are not wanting now, 
men who lifted up their voices in favor of compromise; 
and I think that very few who saw the effects of com- 
promise at that time believe it to be a cure. They prom- 
ised finality. They took renewed courage, and with a 
strong arm of injustice destroyed a compromise still ante- 
rior to theirs, — namely, the Missouri Compromise, — itself 
a wickedness only paralleled by that which destroyed it. 
It ought not to have been made; but after it was made, 
it should have been removed only for purposes of liberty, 
and not for purposes of oppression. We sold our birth- 
right for a mess of pottage, and the pottage was then 
stolen ! 

We have had, then, a long experience of the virtues and 
merits of compromise; and what has been the result, ex- 
cept growing demands, growing impudence, growing wick- 
edness, and increasing dissatisfaction, until at last excite- 
ments that used to come once in twenty years began to 
come at every ten, and now once in four years, and you 
cannot elect a President strictly according to constitu- 
tional methods, without having this nation imperiled, 
banks shaken, stores overturned, panics created, and cit- 
izens terrified ? You have come to that state in which 
the whole nation is turmoiled, and agitated, and driven 
hither and thither, on account of the evil effects of com- 
promise. 

It is asked, "What shall we do?" We should speak the 
16 



242 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

truth about our feelings, and about our intentions. The 
North should have nothing to do with half-way measures or 
half-way men. A whole man is good if he is imperfect; but 
a half-way man has no place in heaven, he has no place in 
hell, and he is not wanted on earth ! We do not want half- 
way measures, nor half-way men. We want true men, who 
will say to the South : " The North loves liberty, and will 
have it. We will not aggress on you. Keep your institu- 
tions within your own bounds : we will not hinder you. We 
will not take advantage to destroy, or one whit to abate, 
your fair political prerogatives. You have already gained 
advantages of us. These we wall allow you to hold. You 
shall have the Constitution intact, and its full benefit. The 
full might and power of public sentiment in the North shall 
guarantee to you everything that history and the Constitu- 
tion give you. But if you ask us to augment the area of 
slavery; to co-operate with you in cursing new territory; if 
you ask us to make the air of the North favorable for a 
slave's breath, we will not do it ! We love liberty as much as 
you love slavery, and we shall stand by our rights with all the 
vigor with which we mean to stand by justice toward you." 
In short, the North cannot love slavery or cease to love 
liberty; she cannot conceal her sentiments or restrain their 
moral power; she cannot prevent the irritating contrast be- 
tween Free States and Slave States; she cannot prevent 
the growing intelligence of slaves, nor their love of liberty, 
nor their disposition to seek it, nor the sympathy that every 
generous soul must feel, nor the humane and irresistible 
wish that they may succeed in obtaining freedom; we can- 
not sympathize with the hounds that hunt them, nor with 
the miscreants employed to witness against them, nor with 
the disgraced Federal officers that are bribed with double 
fees to convict them : the North cannot either permit her 
own citizens — colored men, Christians, honest and indus- 
trious, and many of them voters a thousand times better 
fitted for the franchise than the ignorant hordes of imported 
white men that have cheated their way against law and 
morals to the exercise of the vote — to be subject to seizure 
as slaves under the odious and ruthless provisions of an in- 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 



243 



suiting Fugitive Slave Law, without providing for them 
State protection; we will not assist in inflicting upon free 
territory an evil which we abhor, and which we believe to 
be the greatest blight that can curse a people; we will not ac- 
cept the new-fangled and modern doctrine that slaVery is 
national and universal instead of the doctrine of our fathers 
of the Revolution and of the Federal Constitution, who 
regarded slavery as local, existing not in the right of a 
national law, but only by force of special law; certainly 
we will not apostatize from the faith of our fathers only 
for the sake of committing disgraceful crimes against 
liberty ! 

Let not the South listen to any man who pretends that 
the North will look kindly or compromisingly upon slavery. 
In every other respect we may be depended upon for all 
sympathy, aid, and comfort. In this thing we shall give 
the strictest and most literal obedience to those constitu- 
tional requirements which we hate while we obey, and be- 
yond bare and meager duty we will not go a step. 

Now, can any man believe that peace can come by covi- 
promisel It is a delusive hope. It is a desperate shift of 
cowardice. It will begin in deceit and end in anger. Com- 
promises are only procrastinations of an inevitable settle- 
ment with the added burden of accumulated interest. Our 
political managers only renew the note with compound in- 
terest, and roll the debt over, and over, until the interest 
exceeds the principal. It is time for a settlement. We may 
as well have it now as ever. We shall never be better pre- 
pared. It will never be so easy as now. It would have been 
easier ten years ago, and yet easier ten years before that. 
Like an ulcer, this evil eats deeper every day. Unless soon 
cauterized or excised, it will touch the vitals, and then the 
patient dies ! 

The supreme fear of Northern cities is pecuniary. But 
even for money's sake, there should be a settlement that 
will stay settled. Compromises bury troubles, but cannot 
keep down their ghosts. They rise, and walk, and haunt, 
and gibber. We must bury our evils without resurrection. 
Let come what will,— secession, disunion, revolted States, 



244 



PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 



and a ragamuffin empire of bankrupt States, confederated 
in the name of liberty for oppression, or whatever other 
monstrosity malignant fortune may have in store, — nothing 
can be worse than this endless recurring threat and fear, — 
this arrogant dragooning of the South, — this mercantile 
cringing in the North. Every interest cries out for Rest. 
It scarcely matters how low we begin. We have a recupera- 
tive enterprise, a fertile industry, a wealth of resources, 
which will soon replace any waste. Let the gates of a per- 
manent settlement be set up in bleak and barren granite, 
and we will speedily cover them with the evergreen ivy of 
our industry. But perpetual uncertainty is destructive of 
all business. That is not a settlement that only hides, that 
adjourns, that trumps up a compromise against the known 
feelings of both parties, and which must inevitably fall to 
pieces as soon as the hands that make it are taken off. 
Shall every quadrennial election take place in the full fury 
of Southern threats? Is the plantation-whip to control our 
ballot-boxes? Shall Northern sentiment express itself by 
constitutional means, at the peril of punishment? Must 
panic follow elections ? and bankruptcy follow every ex- 
pression of liberty ? And what are the precious advantages 
which the North reaps, which make it worth her while to 
undergo such ignominy and such penalty ? 

Every advantage that can be reckoned belongs to the 
North. Ours is the population. Ours is free labor. Ours 
is a common people not ashamed of toil, and able to make 
Work a badge of honor. Ours is popular intelligence, com- 
petitive industry, ingenuity and enterprise. We put the 
whole realm and wealth of Freedom and Civilization 
against Slavery and Barbarism, and ask what have we to 
fear? If secession and separation must come, — which God 
forbid ! — which can best bear it. Freedom or Slavery ? 

The North must accept its own principles and take the 
consequences. Manliness demands this, — Honor demands 
it. But if we will not heed worthier motives, then Interest 
demands it. If even this is not strong enough for com- 
mercial pusillanimity, then Necessity, inevitable and irre- 
sistible, will drive and scourge us to it ! 



AGAINST A COMPROMISE OF PRINCIPLE. 245 

When night is on the deep, when the headlands are ob- 
scured by the darkness, and when storm is in the air, that 
man who undertakes to steer by looking over the side of 
the ship, over the bow, or over the stern, or by looking at 
the clouds or his own fears, is a fool. There is a silent 
needle in the binnacle, which points like the finger of God, 
telling the mariner which way to steer, and enabling him 
to outride the storm, and reach the harbor in safety. And 
what the compass is to navigation, that is moral principle 
in political affairs. Whatever the issue may be, we have but 
one thing to do, and that is to look where the compass of 
God points, and steer that way. You need not fear ship- 
wreck when God is the pilot. 

The latter-day glory is already dawning. God is calling 
to the nations. The long-oppressed are arousing. The des- 
potic thrones are growing feeble. It is an age of liberty. 
The trumpet is sounding in all the world, and one nation 
after another is moving to the joyful sound, and God is 
mustering the great army of liberty under his banners ! 
In this day, shall America be found laggard ? While des- 
potisms are putting off the garments of oppression, shall 
she pluck them up and put them on ? While France and 
Italy, Germany and Russia, are advancing toward the dawn, 
shall we recede toward midnight ? From this grand pro- 
cession of nations, with faces lightened by liberty, shall 
we be missing? While they advance toward a brighter 
day, shall we, with faces lurid with oppression, slide down- 
ward toward the pit which gapes for injustice and crime? 

Let every good man arouse and speak the truth for lib- 
erty. Let us have an invincible courage for liberty. Let 
us have moderation in passions, zeal in moral sentiments, 
a spirit of conciliation and concession in mere material in- 
terests, but unmovable firmness for principles; and — fore- 
most of all political principles — for Liberty ! 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS.* 



"And there arose a great stonn of wind, and the waves beat into the 
ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, 
asleep on a pillow, and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest 
thou not that we perish ? And he arose and rebuked the wind, and said 
unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great 
calm." — Mark iv. 37-39. 

At the close of a laborious day, our Saviour entered a 
ship, upon the lake of Gennesaret, to cross to the other 
side. Wearied by his great tasks of mercy, which had filled 
the day, he fell asleep. Meantime, a sudden and violent 
wind, to which that lake is even yet subject, swept down 
from the hills, and wellnigh overwhelmed them. They 
were not ignorant of navigation, nor unacquainted with 
that squally sea. Like good men and true, doubtless, they 
laid about them. They took in sail, and put out oars, and, 
heading to the wind, valiantly bore up against the gale, 
and thought nothing of asking help till they had exerted 
every legitimate power of their own. But the waves over- 
leaped their slender bulwarks, and filled the little vessel 
past all bailing. 

Then, when they had done all that men could do, but not 
till then, they aroused the sleeping Christ and implored his 
succor. Not for coming to him did he rebuke them, but 
for coming with such terror of despair, saying to them, Why 
are ye so fearful ? How is it that ye have no faith ? He out- 



*During the winter of 1S59-60 the South and its Democratic allies at 
the North were industriously charging the unhappy state of the country 
upon the Republican party, and imputing it to excesses and fanaticisms in the 
name of liberty. This sermon was preached January 4, 1861, the Fast 
Day appointed by President Buchanan. It was intended to show that, 
while the nation undoubtedly had ample reason for fasting, humiliation, and 
confession, this reason was, not that too much had been done for liberty, but 
too little. 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 247 

breathed upon the winds, and their strength quite forsook 
them. He looked upon the surly waves, and they hasted 
back to their caverns. There is no tumult in the heavens, 
on the earth, nor upon the sea, that Christ's word cannot 
control. When it pleases God to speak, tempestuous clouds 
are peaceful as flocks of doves, and angry seas change all 
their roar to rippling music. 

This nation is rolling helplessly in a great tempest. The 
Chief Magistrate in despair calls us to go to the sleeping 
Saviour, and to beseech his Divine interference. It may be 
true that the crew have brought the ship into danger by 
cowardice or treachery; it may be true that a firm hand on 
the wheel would even yet hold her head to the wind, and ride 
out the squall. But what of that? 

Humiliation and prayer are never out of order. This 
nation has great sins unrepented of; and whatever may be 
our own judgment of the wisdom of public men in regard 
to secular affairs, we cannot deny that in this respect they 
have hit rarely well. Instead of finding fault with the 
almost only wise act of many days, let us rather admire 
with gratitude this unexpected piety of men in high places. 

This government is in danger of subversion; and surely, 
while the venerable Chief Magistrate of this nation, and all 
the members of his Cabinet, are doubtless this day relig- 
iously abstaining from food, according to the proclamation, 
and humbly confessing their manifold sins, it would ill be- 
come us to go unconcerned and negligent of such duties of 
piety and patriotism. Nor need we be inconveniently frank 
and critical. What if some shall say that fasting is a poor 
substitute for courage, and prayer a miserable equivalent 
for fidelity to duty ? What if the national authorities have 
not only appointed the Fast, but afforded sufficient material 
in their own conduct for observing it? It is all the more 
necessary on that account that we should pause, and hum- 
ble ourselves before God, and implore his active inter- 
ference. 

But however monstrous the pretense of trouble may be, 
the danger is the same. Government is in danger of sub- 
version. No greater disaster could befall this continent or 



248 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the world; for such governments fall but once, and then 
there is no resurrection. Since there is no famine in the 
land, no pestilence, no invasion of foreign foe, no animosity 
of the industrial classes against each other, or against their 
employers, whence is our danger? from what quarter come 
these clouds, drifting with bolts of war and destruction ? 
Over the Gulf, to the South, the storm hangs lurid ! From 
the treacherous Caribbean Sea travel the darkness and 
swirling tornadoes ! 

What part of this complicated Government has at last 
broken down ? Is it the legislative ? the judicial? the execu- 
tive? Has experience shown us that this costly machine, 
like many another, is more ingenious than practicable ? Not 
another nation in the world, not a contemporaneous govern- 
ment, during the past seventy-five years, can compare, for 
regularity, simplicity of execution, and for a wise and facile 
accomplishment of the very ends of government, with ours. 
And yet, what is the errand of this daj' ? Why are we ob- 
serving a sad Sabbath ? a day of humiliation ? a day of sup- 
plication ? It is for the strangest reason that the world ever 
heard. It is because the spirit of liberty has so increased 
and strengthened among us, that the Government is in dan- 
ger of being overthrown ! There never before was such an 
occasion for fasting, humiliation, and prayer ! Other nations 
have gone through revolutions to find their liberties. We 
are on the eve of a revolution to put down liberty ! Other 
people have thrown off their governments because too 
oppressive. Ours is to be destroyed, if at all, because it is 
too full of liberty, too full of freedom. There never was 
such an event before in history. 

But however monstrous the pretense, the danger is here. 
In not a few States of this Union reason seems to have fled, 
and passion rules. To us who have been bred in cooler lat- 
itudes and under more cautious maxims, it seems incredible 
that men should abandon their callings, break up the indus- 
tries of the community, and give themselves up to the wild- 
est fanaticism, at the expense of every social and civil inter- 
est, and without the slightest reason or cause in their 
relations to society and to the country, past or future. 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 249 

Communities, like individuals, are liable to aberrations of 
mind. Panics and general excitements seem to move by- 
laws as definite as those which control epidemics or the 
pestilence. And in one portion of our land such an insanity 
now rules. Cities are turned into camps. All men are 
aping soldiers. For almost a thousand miles there is one 
wild riot of complaint and boasting. Acts of flagrant 
wrong are committed against the Federal Government. 
And these things are but the prelude. It is plainly declared 
that this Government shall be broken up, and many men 
mean it; and that the President elect* of this great nation 
shall never come to the place appointed by this people. 
Riot and civil war, with their hideous train of murders, 
revenges, and secret villanies are gathering their elements, 
and hang in ominous terror over the capital of this nation. 

Meanwhile, we have had no one to stand up for order. 
Those who should have spoken in decisive authority have 
been — afraid ! Severer w^ords have been used; it is enough 
for me to say only that in a time when God, and providence, 
and patriotism, and humanity demanded courage, they had 
nothing to respond but fear. The heart has almost ceased 
to beat, and this Government is like to die for want of pul- 
sations at the center. While the most humiliating fear 
paralyzes one part of the Government, the most wicked 
treachery is found in other parts of it. Men advanced to 
the highest places by the power of our Constitution, have 
employed their force to destroy that Constitution. They 
are using their oath as a soldier uses his shield, to cover 
and protect them while they are mining the foundations, 
and opening every door, and unfastening every protection 
by which colluding traitors may gain easy entrance and 
fatal success. Gigantic dishonesties, meanwhile, stalk 
abroad almost without shame. And this Puritan land, this 
free Government, these United States, like old Rome in her 
latest imperial days, helpless at the court, divided among 
her own citizens, overhung by hordes of Goths and Barba- 
rians, seems about to be swept with the fury of war. 

If at such a solemn crisis as this men refuse to look at 

*Abrahain Lincoln, who had been elected in the November previous. 



250 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

things as they are; to call their sins to remembrance; to 
confess and forsake them; if they shall cover over the great 
sins of this people, and confess only in a sentimental way, 
(as one would solace an evening sadness by playing some 
sweet and minor melody,) then we may fear that God has 
indeed forsaken his people. But if we shall honestly con- 
fess our real sins; if we propose to cleanse ourselves from 
them; if we make prayer not a substitute for action, but 
an incitement to it; if we rise from our knees this day more 
zealous for temperance, for honesty, for real brotherhood, 
for pure and undefiled religion, and for that which is the 
sum and product of them all, regulated liberty to all men, 
then will the clouds begin to break, and we shall see the 
blue shining through, and the sun, ere long, driving away 
the tumultuous storm, shall come back in triumph. 

1. It is well, then, that every one of us make this day the 
beginning of a solemn review of his own life, and the tend- 
encies of his own conduct and character. A general repent- 
ance of national sins should follow, rather than precede, a 
personal and private conviction of our own individual 
transgressions. For it has been found not difficult for men 
to repent of other people's sins; but it is found somewhat 
difficult and onerous to repent of one's own sins. We are 
all of us guilty before God of pride, of selfishness, of 
vanity, of passions unsubdued, of worldliness in manifold 
forms, and of strife. We have been caught in th^ stream, 
and swept out into an ocean of thoughts and feelings 
which cannot bear the inquest of God's judgment-day. 
And we have lived in them almost unrebuked. Each man 
will find his own life full of repentable sins unrepented of. 

2. We should take solemn account of our guilt in the 
great growth of social laxity and vice and crime in our 
great cities. We have loved ease rather than duty. Every 
American citizen is by birth a sworn officer of state. 
Every man is a policeman. If bad men have had impunity, 
if the vile have controlled our municipal affairs, if by our 
delinquencies and indolence justice has been perverted, and 
our cities are full of great public wickedness, then we can- 
not put the guilt away from our own consciences. We have 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 



251 



a partnership in the conduct of wicked men, unless we have 
exhausted proper and permissible means of forestalling and 
preventing it. Every citizen of such a city as this, looking 
upon intemperance, upon lewdness, upon gambling, upon 
the monstrous wickednesses that ferment at the bottom of 
society, or beat in its arteries, should feel that he has some 
occasion to repent of his own delinquency and moral indif- 
ference. We are responsible for existing evils in such a 
nation as ours, in as far as they might have been prevented 
or limited by our resolute influence. 

3. We may. not refuse to consider the growth of corrupt 
passions in connection with the increase of commercial 
prosperity. Luxury, extravagance, ostentation, and cor- 
ruption of morals in social life have given alarming evi- 
dence of a premature old age in a young country. The sins 
of a nation are always the sins of certain central passions. 
In one age they break out in one way, and in another age 
in another way; but they are the same central sins, after 
all. The corrupt passions which lead in the Southern States 
to all the gigantic evils of slavery, in Northern cities break 
out in other forms, not less guilty before God, because of a 
less public nature. The same thing that leads to the op- 
pression of laborers among us leads to oppression on the 
plantation. The grinding of the poor, the advantages which 
capital takes of labor, the oppression of the farm, the op- 
pression of the road, the oppression of the shop, the oppres- 
sion of the ship, are all of the same central nature, and as 
guilty before God as the more systematic and overt oppres- 
sions of the plantation. It is always the old human heart 
that sins. North or South; and the natures of pride and of 
dishonesty are universal. We have our own account to 
render. 

4. There is occasion for alarm and for humiliation before 
God, in the spread of avarice among our people. The in- 
tense eagerness to amass wealth; the growing indifference 
of morals as to methods of acquisition; the gradual corrup- 
tion of the moral sense, so that property and self-interest 
dominate the conscience and determine what is right and 
wrong; the use of money for bribery of electors and elected; 



252 



PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 



the terrible imputations which lie against many of our 
courts, that judges walk upon gold in securing place, and 
then sit upon gold in the judgment-seat; the use of money 
in legislation; and the growing rottenness of politics from 
the lowest village concern to matters of national dimension, 
from constables to the Chief Magistrate of these United 
States: — is this all to be confessed only in a single smooth 
sentence? 

Such is the wantonness and almost universality of ava- 
rice as a corrupting agent in public affairs, that it be- 
hooves every man to consider his responsibilities before 
God in this matter. The very planks between us and the 
ocean are worm-eaten and rotting, when avarice'takes hold 
of public integrity; for avarice is that sea-worm, ocean- 
bred, and swarming innumerable, that will pierce the 
toughest planks, and bring the stoutest ships to foundering. 
Our foundations are crumbling. The sills on which we are 
building are ready to break. We need reformation in the 
very beginnings and elements of society. If in other parts 
of our land they are in danger of going down by avarice 
in one form, we are in danger of going down by avarice 
in another form. 

Our people are vain, and much given to boasting; and 
because they love flatteries, those deriving from them 
honor and trust are too fond of feeding their appetite for 
praise. Thus it comes to pass that we hear the favorable 
side of our doings and character, and become used to a 
flattering portrait. Men grow popular who have flowing 
phrases of eulogy. Men who speak unpalatable truths are 
disliked; and if they have power to make the public con- 
science uncomfortable, they are said to abuse the liberty 
of free speech, — for it is the liberty of fanning men to 
sleep that is supposed to be legitimate; the liberty of 
waking men out of sleep is supposed to be license ! And 
yet we shall certainly die by the sweetness of flattery; or, 
if we are healed, it must be by the bitterness of faithful 
speech. There is tonic in the things that men do not love 
to hear; and there is damnation in the things that wicked 
men love to hear. Free speech is to a great people what 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 



25: 



winds are to malarial regions, which waft away the elements 
of disease, and bring new elements of health. Where free 
speech is stopped, miasma is bred, and death comes fast. 

5. But upon a day of national fasting and confession, we 
are called to consider not alone our individual and social 
evils, but also those which are national. And justice re- 
quires that we should make mention of the sins of this 
nation on every side, past and present. I should violate 
my own convictions, if, in the presence of more nearly 
present and more exciting influences, I should neglect to 
mention the sins of this nation against the Indian, who, 
as much as the slave, is dumb, but who, unlike the 
slave, has almost none to think of him, and to speak of 
his wrongs. We must remember that we are the only 
historians of the wrongs of the Indian, — we that com- 
mit them. And our history of the Indian nations of this 
country is like the inquisitor's history of his own trials of 
innocent victims. He leaves out the rack, and the groans, 
and the anguish, and the unutterable wrongs, and puts but 
his own glozingview in his journal. We have heaped up the 
account of treachery and cruelty on their part, but we have 
not narrated the provocations, the grinding intrusions, and 
the misunderstood interpretations of their policy, on our 
part. Every crime in the calendar of wrong which a strong 
people can commit against a weak one has been committed 
by us against them. We have wasted their substance; we 
have provoked their hostility, and then chastised them for 
their wars; we have compelled them to peace ignominiously ; 
we have formed treaties with them only to be broken; we 
have filched their possessions. In our presence they have 
wilted and wasted. A heathen people have experienced 
at the hands of a Christian nation almost every evil which 
one people can commit against another. 

Admit the laws of race; admit the laws of advancing 
civilization as fatal to all barbarism; admit the indocility 
of the savage; admit the rude edges of violent men who 
form the pioneer advance of a great people, and the intrin- 
sic difficulties of managing a people whose notions and 
customs and laws are utterly different from our own, and 



254 



PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 



then you have only explained how the evil has been done, 
but you have not changed the fact nor its guilt. The mis- 
chief has been done, and this is simply the excuse. It is a 
sorry commentary upon a Christian nation, and indeed 
upon religion itself, that the freest and most boastfully re- 
ligious people on the globe are absolutely fatal to any 
weaker people that they touch. What would be thought 
of a man who, when he became converted to Christianity, 
was dangerous to the next man's pocket? What would be 
thought of a man who grew dangerous in the ratio of his 
moral excellence? And what must be the nature of that 
Christianization which makes this Republic a most dan- 
gerous neighbor to nations weaker than itself ? We are 
respectful to strength, but thieves and robbers to weakness. 
It is not safe for any to trust our magnanimity and gen- 
erosity. We have no chivalry. We have avarice; we have 
haughty arrogance; we have assumptive ways; and we 
have a desperate determination to live, to think only of 
our own living, and to sweep with the besom of destruc- 
tion whatever occupies the place where we would put our 
foot. 

Nor is this confined to the Indian. The Mexicans have 
felt the same rude foot. This nation has employed its gi- 
gantic strength with almost no moral restriction. Our 
civilization has not begotten humanity and respect for 
others' rights, nor a spirit of protection to the weak. Nor 
can we excuse ourselves by declaring that these wanton 
cruelties have been inspired by Southern counsels, and 
perpetrated by Southern influence, and that they are the 
legitimate fruit of that unholy system of slavery which for 
fifty years has swayed the government of this nation. 
These facts are undoubtedly true. But we must not forget 
that we permitted the outrages. Resistance was feeble. 
Protests were mild. We preferred to suffer such wrongs 
upon the weak, rather than imperil our peace and com- 
mercial prosperity by a resolute resistance. 

It is quite in vain to say that the land from which we 
sprung did the same that we are doing. A wicked daugh- 
ter is not excused because she had a wicked mother. We 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 255 

boast of the Anglo-Saxon race; and if bone and muscle, 
and indomitable sense of personal liberty, and a disposi- 
tion to do what we please, are themes for Christian rejoic- 
ing, then the Anglo-Saxon may well rejoice. There are 
sins that belong to races; there are sins that belong to peo- 
ples; there are sins that belong to generations of the same 
people; and the sins that I have enumerated are sins that 
belong to our stock. 

But God never forgets what we most easily forget. 
Either moral government over nations is apocryphal, or 
judgments are yet to be visited upon us for the wrongs 
done to the Indian, and to our weak and helpless neighbors. 

6. But I am now come to the most alarming and most 
fertile cause of national sin, — slavery. We are called by 
our Chief Magistrate to humble ourselves before God for 
our sins. This is not only a sin, but it is a fountain from 
which have flowed so many sins that we cannot rightly 
improve this day without a consideration of them. 

In one and the same year, 1620, English ships landed 
the Puritans in New England and negro slaves in Vir- 
ginia, — two seeds of the two systems that were destined 
to find here a growth and strength unparalleled in his- 
tory. It would have seemed almost a theatric arrange- 
ment, had these oppugnant elements, Puritan liberty and 
Roman servitude, — (for, whatever men may say, American 
slavery is not Hebrew slavery; it is Roman slavery. We 
borrowed every single one of the elemental principles 
of our system of slavery from the Roman law, and not 
from the old Hebrew. The fundamental feature of the 
Hebrew system was that the slave was a man, and not 
a chattel, while the fundamental feature of the Roman 
system was that he was a chattel, and not a man. The 
essential principle of the old Mosaic servitude made it the 
duty of the master to treat his servants as men and to 
instruct them in his own religion, and in the matters 
of his own household; while the essential principle of Ro- 
man servitude allowed the master to treat his servants to 
all intents and purposes as chattels, goods), — it would 
have seemed, I say, almost a theatric arrangement had 



256 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

these oppugnant elements, Puritan liberty and Roman 
servitude, divided the land between them, and, inspiring 
different governments, grown up different nations, in 
contrast, that the world might see this experiment fairly 
compared and worked out to the bitter end. 

But it was not to be so. The same government has 
nourished both elements. Our Constitution nourished 
twins. It carried Africa on its left bosom, and Anglo-Sax- 
dom on its right bosom; and these two, drawing milk 
from the same bosom, have waxed strong, and stand to- 
day federated into the one republic. One side of the body 
politic has grown fair and healthy and strong; the other 
side has grown up as a wen grows, and a wart, vast, but 
the vaster the weaker. We have yielded new territory to 
this terrible disease. They have demanded, and we have 
permitted, concessions, legislative compromises, construc- 
tions. Peace and friendship have been the ostensible pleas. 
The ambition of political parties and the short-sighted in- 
terests of commerce have been the real and active motives 
of this wicked consent ! 

We who dwell in the North are not without responsibil- 
ity for this sin. Its wonderful growth and the arrogance 
of its claims have been in part through our delinquency. 
As our business to-day is not to find fault with the South, 
I am not discussing this matter with reference to them at 
all, but only with reference to our own individual profit. 
Because the South loved money, they augmented this evil; 
and because the North loved money, and that quiet which 
befits industry and commerce, she has refused to insist 
upon her moral convictions, in days past, and yielded to 
every demand carrying slavery forward in this nation. 
You and I are guilty of the spread of slavery unless we 
have exerted, normally and legitimately, every influence 
in our power against it. If we have said, "To agitate the 
question imperils manufacturing, imperils shipping, im- 
perils real estate, imperils quiet and peace," and if, then, 
we have sacrificed purity and honesty, — if we have 
bought the right to make money here by letting slavery 
spread and grow there, — we have been doing just the 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 



257 



same thing that they have. It has been one gigantic 
bargain, only working out in different ways, North and 
South. It is for us just as much as for them that the 
slave works; and we acquiesce. We clothe ourselves with 
the cotton which the slave tills. Is he scorched ? is he 
lashed ? does he water the crop with his sweat and tears ? 
It is you and I that wear the shirt and consume the lux- 
ury. Our looms and our factories are largely built on the 
slave's bones. We live on his labor. I confess I see no 
way to escape a part of the responsibility for slavery. I 
feel guilty in part for this system. If the relinquishment 
of the articles which come from slave labor would tend 
even remotely to abridge or end the evil, I would without 
hesitation forego every one; but I do not see that it would 
help the matter. I am an unwilling partner in the slave 
system. I take to myself a part of the sin; I confess it 
before God; and pray for some way to be opened by which 
I may be freed from that which I hate bitterly. 

But this state of facts makes it eminently proper for us to 
confess our sin, and the wrong done to the slave. All the 
wrongs, the crimes of some, the abuse of others, the neglect, 
the misuse, the ignorance, the separations, the scourg- 
ings, — these cannot be rolled into a cloud to overhang the 
South alone. Every one of us has something to confess. 
Those who have been most scrupulous, if God should 
judge their life, their motives, and their conduct, would 
find that they, too, had some account in this great bill of 
slavery. The whole nation is guilty. There is not a lum- 
berman on the verge of Maine, not a settler on the far 
distant northern prairies, not an emigrant on the Pacific 
shore, that is not politically and commercially in alliance 
with this great evil. If you put poison into 5'^our system in 
any way, there is not a nerve that is not affected by it; 
there is not a muscle that does not feel it; there is not a bone, 
nor a tissue, nor one single part nor parcel of your whole 
body, that can escape it. And our body politic is pervaded 
with this deadly injustice, and every one of us is more or 
less, directly or indirectly, willingly or unwillingly, im- 
plicated in it. We have a great deal to confess before we 



258 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

cast reproaches upon the South. And while I hold Southern 
citizens to the full and dreadful measure of their guilt be- 
fore God, and would, if I were settled there, tell them their 
sin as plainly as I tell you your sin, it is for us to-day, and 
here, to consider our own part in this matter ; and to that I 
shall speak during the residue of my remarks. 

Originally, we were guilty of active participation in 
slavery. It seems very strange to take up the old Boston 
books and read the history of slavery in Boston. We of 
the North early abandoned the practice of holding slaves. 
But it is said that ours is a cheap philanthropy; that, 
having got quit of our slaves by selling them, we turn round 
and preach to the South about the sin of holding theirs. 
There is nothing more false than such a charge. There is 
nothing more illustrious in the history of the State of New 
York, and of the Northern States generally, than the method 
by which they freed themselves from slavery. This State 
decreed liberty at a certain period, making it an offense, 
the penalty attached to which no one would willingly 
inherit, for a man to convey away, or in any manner what- 
soever to sell out of the State, a person held as a slave; 
and if a man, anticipating the day of emancipation, wished 
to make a journey to the South with his slaves, he had to 
give bonds for their return before he went away, and an 
account when he came back, if they did not come with 
him. Nothing could have been more humane than the 
provision that the slave should not be sold out of the State 
of New York, but should be emancipated in it. And what 
is true of New York in this respect, is true of the States 
generally that emancipated their slaves. 

But we of the North participated in the beginnings, and 
we are in part guilty of the subsequent spread of the 
system of slavery. When our government came into our 
hands, after the struggle of the Revolution, we had gone 
through such a schooling, that the head, the conscience, 
and the heart of this nation, in the main, were right on the 
subject of human liberties. And at the adoption of the 
Federal Constitution, nearly seventy-five years ago, it 
might be said that, with local and insignificant exceptions. 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 259 

there was but one judgment, one wish, and one prophetic 
expectation; namely, that this whole territory should be 
dedicated to liberty, and that every compliance or com- 
promise was not to be made in the interest of oppression, 
but was to be made only to give oppression time to die 
decently. That was the spirit and intent of every conces- 
sion or compromise that was made. 

The schools, the academies, the colleges, the intelligence, 
the brain of this nation, at that time, were in the North, — 
and in the North I include all the territory north of Mason 
and Dixon's line. Churches, religious institutions, those 
moral elements that always went with the posterity of the 
Puritans, were then also in the North. When our Consti- 
tution was adopted, — when the wheels of our mighty 
Confederacy were adjusted, and the pendulum began to 
swing, — at that time the public sentiment was in favor of 
liberty. All the institutions were prepared for liberty, 
and all the piablic men were on the side of liberty. And 
to the North, because she was the brain, — to the North, 
because she was the moral center and heart of this Con- 
federacy, — was given this estate; for in this twenty-five or 
thirty years the North predominated in the councils of the 
nation, and fixed its institutions, as the South has fixed its 
policy since. What, then, having this trust put into her 
hands, is the account of her stewardship which the North 
has to render ? If now, after three quarters of a century 
have passed away, God should summon the North to his 
judgment-bar and say, " I gave you a continent in which, 
though there was slavery, it was perishing; I gave you a 
nation in which the sentiment was for liberty and against 
oppression; I gave you a nation in which the tendencies 
were all for freedom and against slavery; I gave you the 
supreme intelligence; I gave 5'ou the moral power in a 
thousand pulpits, a thousand books, a thousand Bibles, and 
said, 'Take this nation, administer it, and render up j^our 
trust';" — if now, after three quarters of a century have 
passed away, God should thus summon the North to his 
judgment-bar, what would be the account which she would 
have to render ? — the North, that was strongest in the head 



26o PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and in the heart, and that took as fair a heritage as men 
ever attempted to administer? To-day liberty is dis- 
honored and discrowned, and slavery is rampant, in this 
nation. And do you think to creep out of the responsi- 
bility and say, " We are not to blame ? " What have you 
been doing with your intelligence, your books, your schools, 
your Bibles, your missionaries, your ministers ? Where, 
where is the artillery that God Almighty gave you, park 
upon park, for use in this contest, provided and prepared 
for that special emergency ? Much as I love the North, — 
and I love every drop of Puritan blood that the world ever 
saw, because it seems to me that Puritan blood means 
blood touched with Christ's blood, — I take to myself part 
of the shame, and mourn over the delinquency of the 
North, that, having committed to it the eminent task of 
preserving the liberties of this nation, it has suffered them 
to be eclipsed. For to-day there are more Slave States 
than there were States confederated when this nation came 
together. And instead of having three or four hundred 
thousand slaves, we have more than four millions; instead 
of a traffic suppressed, you and I are witnesses to-day of a 
traffic to be reopened, — of rebellion, treasonable war, 
bloodshed, separate independence, for the sake of reopen- 
ing the African slave-trade. So came this country into the 
hands of the North in the beginning, and so it is going out 
of her hands in the end. There never was such a steward- 
ship; and if this Confederacy shall be broken up, if the 
Gulf States shall demand a division of the country, and 
the intermediate States shall go off, and two empires shall 
be established, no steward that has lived since God's sun 
shone on the earth will have such an account to render of 
an estate taken under such favorable auspices, as the North 
will have to render of this great national estate which was 
committed to her trust. It is an astounding sin ! It is an 
unparalleled guilt ! The vengeance and zeal of our hearts 
toward the South might be somewhat tempered by the 
reflection that we have been so faithless and so wicked. 

That is not the worst. That is the material side. We 
have stood with all the elements of power, boasting of our 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 261 

influence, and really swaying, in many respects, the affairs 
of this continent; and yet we have not only seen this tre- 
mendous increase of slavery, but we have permitted the 
doctrines of liberty themselves to be stricken with leprosy. 
And to-day, to-day, to-day, if you were to put it to the vote 
of this whole people, I do not know that you could get a 
majority for any doctrine of liberty but this: that each 
man has a right to be himself free. The great doctrine of 
liberty is concisely expressed by the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence; and it is this: that all men are free, born with 
equal political rights, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. And there is no true right that is not founded 
on this doctrine : That liberty which is good for me is 
indispensable for everybody. A right love of liberty 
inspires a man to say, " I will have it and everybody shall 
have it." That is a poor love of liberty that makes a man 
a champion for the liberty of those that are capable of 
asserting their own liberty. But I doubt whether you could 
get a popular vote for the liberty of all men, if the Africans 
were known to be included. Why should you? I am 
ashamed of what I must speak. The pulpit has been so 
prostituted, and so utterly apostatized from the very root 
and substance of Christianity, that it teaches the most 
heathen notions of liberty ; and why should you expect 
the great masses of men to be better informed on this sub- 
ject than its preachers are ? Do you believe that George 
Washington, were he living, would now be able to live one 
day in the city of Charleston, if he uttered the sentiments 
that he used to hold ? He would be denounced as a traitor, 
and swung up on the nearest lamp-post. Do you suppose 
that one single man that signed the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, if living, could go through the South to-day 
repeating the sentiments contained in that document? 
The lives of the signers of the Declaration of Independence 
would not be worth one day's lease in Alabama, Louisiana, 
Carolina, or Florida, if they were there to say the things 
plainly which they said when they framed this government, 
so utterly have the South vomited up their political views; 
so radically have they changed their notions. Was this 



262 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

country committed to our care ? and is such the lesson that 
we have taught our pupils ? Shall the schoolmaster render 
back the scholars that he undertook to teach, with their 
minds debauched, and say that he was not responsible for 
what they learned ? And if any part of the country was 
responsible for the education of the whole, it was the free- 
schooled, million-churched North. The result of our in- 
struction is this : slavery has spread gigantically, and the 
doctrine of liberty is so corrupted, that to-day nothing is 
more disreputable in the high places of this nation than 
that very doctrine. And at last, when the sleeper, long 
snoring, having been awaked, raised himself up, and, like 
all new zealots, somewhat intemperately made crusade for 
liberty, the land was so agitated, and with such surprise 
was this expression of the public sentiment of the North 
received, that the Chief Magistrate of this nation has 
declared that the advocates of the old colonial, original, 
constitutional doctrines of human rights were the cause of 
all the trouble ! 

But this is not all. The most serious, the most grievous 
charge is yet to be made upon the North. So far have we 
been delinquent in the trust that God committed to us, 
that from the very fountain out of which flowed, as from 
the heart of Christ, the first drops that were to cleanse men 
from oppressions, has been extracted in our day, and in 
our North very largely, the whole spirit of humanity which 
breathes freedom. 

It ill becomes, I think, one profession to rail against 
another, or the members of the same profession to rail 
against each other. I have no accusations to make against 
any, but I will forsake my profession, for the time being, 
and stand as a man among men, to lift up my voice, with 
all my heart and soul, against any man who, professing to 
be ordained to preach, preaches out of Christ's Gospel the 
doctrines of human bondage. If the Bible can be opened 
that all the fiends of hell may, as in a covered passage, 
walk through it to do mischief on earth, I say, blessed be 
infidels ! If men can make the Bible teach me to disown 
childhood; if men can make the Bible teach me that it is 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS. 263 

lawful to buy and sell men, that marriage is impracticable 
between slaves, that laws cannot permit any custom which 
would hinder the easy sale of such property; if the Bible 
can be made the sacred document and constitutional 
guaranty of a system which makes it impossible that a man 
should receive education, because intelligence is costly, and 
swells the slave to a stature not convenient for selfish econ- 
omy; if a man can take the Bible and lay it in the path 
over whic4i men are attempting to walk from Calvary up 
to the gate of heaven; — then I declare that I will do by 
the Bible what Christ did by the Temple: I will take a whip 
of cords, and drive out of it every man that buys and sells 
men, women, and children; and if I cannot do that, I will 
let the Bible go, as God let the Temple go, to the desolating 
armies of its adversaries. And I do not wonder that, after 
so long an experience of the world, men who bombard 
universal humanity, men who plead for the outrage of 
slavery, men who grope to find under crowns and scepters 
the infamous doctrines of servitude, — I do not wonder that 
they are pestered with the idea of man's infidelity. Why, 
that minister who preaches slavery out of the Bible is the 
father of infidelity ! Sometimes men become infidel to 
the Church for the sake of fidelity to religion. The Bible 
may be so interpreted by a besotted priesthood, that plain 
men may be driven from the Book for their very faith in 
its essential contents. Every abomination on earth has 
been at one time or another justified from the Bible ! Thus 
men learn to hate the Bible, not for what it is in reality, 
but because it is made the bulwark of oppression; and 
they spurn it that they may answer the call of God in 
their own nature, — for to be free is a part of the sovereign 
call and election that God has given to every man who has 
a sense of his birthright and immortality. And in a com- 
munity where the minister finds reason in the Bible for 
slavery, you may depend upon it that one of two things 
will take place: either there will be an inquisition to re- 
deem the Bible from such abominable prostitution, or else 
the Bible will be spurned and trodden under the feet of 
men. 



264 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

" I came to open the prison to them that are bound," said 
Christ; and that is the text on which men justify shutting 
them and locking them. " To proclaim liberty to the 
captives;" and that is the text out of which men spin 
cords to bind men, women, and children. " To set at 
liberty them that are bruised; " and that is the Book from 
out of which they argue, with amazing ingenuity, all the 
infernal meshes and snares by which to keep men in 
bondage. It is pitiful. 

Now what has been the history of the Book but this: 
that wherever you have had an untrammeled Bible, you 
have had an untrammeled people; and that wherever you 
have had a Bible shut up, you have had a shut-up people ? 
Where you have had a Bible that the priests interpreted, 
you have had a king. Where you have had a Bible that the 
common people interpreted; where the family has been the 
church; where father and mother have been God's ordained 
priests; where they have read its pages freely from begin- 
ning to end without gloss or commentary, without the 
church to tell them how, but with the illumination of God's 
Spirit in their hearts; — there you have had an indomitable 
yeomanry, a state that would not have a tyrant on the 
throne, a government that would not have a slave or a serf 
in the field. Wherever the Bible has been allowed to be 
free, wherever it has been knocked out of the king's hand, 
and out of the priest's hand, it has carried light like the 
morning sun, rising over hill and vale, round and round 
the world; and it will do it again ! And yet there come 
up in our midst men that say that the Bible is in favor of 
slavery. And as men that are about to make a desperate 
jump go back and run before they jump, so these men 
have to go back to the twilight of creation and take a long 
run; and when they come to their jump, their strength is 
spent, and they but stumble ! 

It is in consideration of this wanton change which has 
taken place (and which ought never to have been permitted 
to take place, in view of the instruments that God put into 
our hands, and in view of the solemn responsibility that he 
has put upon us), — it is in consideration of this change 



OUR BLAMEWORTHINESS, 265 

which has taken place in the moral condition of the coun- 
try, and in the opinions of this people respecting the 
great doctrine of liberty, and the worse change which has 
in part corrupted the Church at its very core, that I argue 
to-day the necessity of humiliation and repentance before 
God. 

I shall first confess my own sin. Sometimes men think 
I have been unduly active. I think I have been indolent. 
In regard to my duty in my personal and professional life, 
I chide myself for nothing more than because I have not 
been more alert, more instant in season and out of season. 
If sometimes in intemperate earnestness I have wounded 
the feelings of any, if I have seemed to judge men harshly, 
for that I am sorry. But for holding the slave as my 
brother; for feeling that the Spirit of God is the spirit of 
liberty; for loving my country so well that I cannot bear 
to see a stain or a blot upon her; for endeavoring to take 
the sands from the river of life wherewith to scour white 
as snow the morals of my times, and to cleanse them to 
the uttermost of all spot and aspersion, — for that I have 
no tears to shed. I only mourn that I have not been more 
active and zealous, and I do not wish to separate myself 
from my share of the responsibility. I am willing to take 
my part of the yoke and burden. I will weep my tears 
before God, and pray my prayers of sincere contrition and 
penitence, that I have not been more faithful to liberty and 
religion in the North and the whole land. 

But be sure of one thing: He that would not come 
when the sisters sent, but tarried, has come, and the stone 
is rolled away, and he stands by the side of the sepulcher. 
He has called, " Liberty, come forth ! " and, bound yet 
hand and foot, it has come forth; and that same sovereign 
voice is saying, '■'■ Loose him, and let him go ! " and from 
out of the tomb, the dust, the night, and the degradation, 
the better spirit of this people is now emerging at the 
voice of God. We have heard his call, we know the bid- 
ding, and Death itself cannot -hold us any longer; and 
there is before us, we may fain believe, a new lease of life, 
a more blessed national existence. That there will not be 



266 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

concussions, and perhaps garments rolled in blood, I will 
not undertake to say : there may be some such things as 
these; but, brethren, this nation is not going to perish. 
This Union is not going to be broken and shivered like a 
crystal vase that can never be put together again. We are 
to be tested and tried; but if we are in earnest, and if we 
stand, as martyrs and confessors before us have stood, 
bearing witness in this thing for Christ, know ye that ere 
long God will appear, and be the leader and captain of our 
salvation, and we shall have given back to us this whole 
land, healed, restored to its right mind, and sitting at the 
feet of Jesus. 

Love God, love men, love your dear fatherland; to-day 
confess your sins toward God, toward men, toward your 
own fatherland; and may that God that loves to forgive 
and forget, hear our cries and our petitions which we make, 
pardon the past, inspire the future, and bring the latter- 
day glory through a regenerated zeal and truth, inspired 
by his Spirit, in this nation. Amen, and amen. 



II 
CIVIL WAR 




^^yf^^y^^^T^-A^yhy <?iu>i-uur^. 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 



" And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto me ? speak 
unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." — Exod. xiv. 15. 



Moses was raised up to be the emancipator of three 
millions of people. At the age of forty, having, through 
a singular providence, been reared in the midst of luxur)% 
in the proudest, most intelligent, and most civilized court 
on the globe, with a heart uncorrupt, with a genuine love 
of his own race and people, he began to act as their eman- 
cipator. He boldly slew one of their oppressors. And, 
seeing dissension among his brethren, he sought to bring 
them to peace. He was rejected, reproved, and reproached ; 
and finding himself discovered, he fled, and, for the sake 
of liberty, became a fugitive and a martyr. For forty 
years, uncomplaining, he dwelt apart with his father-in- 
law, Jethro, in the wilderness, in the peaceful pursuits of a 
herdsman. At eighty — the time when most men lay down 
the burden of life, or have long laid it down — he began 
his life-work. He was called back by the voice of God; 
and now, accompanied by his brother, he returned, con- 
fronted the king, and, moved by Divine inspiration, de- 
manded, repeatedly, the release of his people. The first de- 
mand was sanctioned by a terrific plague; the second, by a 
second terrible judgment; thethird,by a third frightful dev- 
astation; the fourth, by a fo^urth dreadful blow; the fifth, 
by a fifth desolating, sweeping mischief. A sixth, a seventh, 
an eighth, and a ninth time, he demanded their release. 
And when was there ever, on the face of the earth, a man 
that, once having power, would let it go till life itself went 
with it ? Pharaoh, who is the grand type of oppressors, 
held on in spite of the Divine command and of the Divine 

* Preached April 14, 1861, during the siege of Fort Sumter. 



270 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

punishment. Then God let fly the last terrific judgment, 
and smote the first-born of Egypt; and there was wailing 
in every house of the midnight land. And then, in the 
midst of the first gush of grief and anguish, the tyrant 
said, " Let them go ! let them go ! " And he did let them 
go; he shoved them out; and they went pell-mell in great 
confusion on their way, taking up their line of march, and 
escaped from Egypt. 

But as soon as the first anguish had passed away, Pha- 
raoh came back to his old nature, — just as many men whose 
hearts are softened and whose lives are made better by afflic- 
tion, come back to the old way of feeling and living, as soon as 
they have ceased to experience the first effects of the afflic- 
tion, — and he followed on after the Israelites. As they lay 
encamped — these three millions of people, men, women, 
and children — just apart from the land of bondage, near 
the fork and head of the Red Sea, with great hills on either 
side of them, and the sea before them, some one brought 
panic into the camp, saying, " I see the signs of an advanc- 
ing host ! The air far on the horizon is filled with rising 
clouds ! " Presently, through these clouds, began to be 
seen glancing spears, mounted horsemen, and a great 
swelling army. Such, to these lately enslaved, but just 
emancipated people, was the first token of the coming ad- 
versary. Surely, they were unable to cope with the disci- 
plined cohorts of this Egyptian king. They, that were 
unused to war, that had never been allowed to hold 
weapons in their hands, that were a poor, despoiled people 
not only, but that had been subjected to the blighting 
touch of slavery, had lost courage. They did not dare to 
be free. And there is no wonder, therefore, that they re- 
proached Moses, and said, " Because there were no graves in 
Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?" 

I have no doubt that, if Pharaoh's courtiers had heard 
that, they would have said, " Ah ! they do not want to be 
free. They do not believe in freedom." 

" Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us 
away to die in the wilderness } Wherefore hast thou dealt thus 
with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt ? " 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 271 

Were these people miserable specimens of humanity ? 
They were just what slavery makes everybody to be. 

" Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, 
Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians ? " 

•They would rather have had peace with servitude, than 
liberty with the manly daring required to obtain it. 

" For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that 
we should die in the wilderness." 

That is just the difference between a man and a slave. 
They would rather have lived slaves, and eaten their pot- 
tage, than to suffer for the sake of liberty ; a man would 
rather die in his tracks, than live in ease as a slave. 

These, then, were the people that Moses undertook to 
emancipate, and this was the beginning of Moses's life- 
work. 

" And Moses said unto the people. Fear ye not, stand still" — 

That was wrong, but he did not know any better. 

" Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, 
which he will show you to-day : for the Egyptians, whom ye have 
seen to-day, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord 
shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace." 

He was a little too fast. He was right in respect to the re- 
sult, but wrong in respect to the means. 

" And the Lord said unto Moses, Wherefore criest thou unto 
me ? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward." 

They were, after all, to do something and dare some- 
thing for their liberty. No standing still, but going for- 
ward ! 

" Lift up the rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and 
divide it ; and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground 
through the midst of the sea." 

You recollect the rest. They walked through the sea 
that lay as a protecting wall on either side of them. They 
reached the other side. They were divided from the camp 
of the Egyptians by a fiery cloud, and the Egyptians could 
not touch them. And what was the fate of the Egyptians ? 



272 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

They attempted to follow the children of Israel through 
the sea, when the waters closed together, and their host 
was destroyed. 

God has raised up many men, at different periods of the 
world, to bring his cause forth from its various exigencies. 
Wherever a man is called to defend a truth or a principle, 
a church or a people, a nation or an age, he may be said to 
be, like Moses, the leader of God's people. And in every 
period of the world God has shut up his people, at one 
time or another, to himself. He has brought their enemies 
behind them, as he brought the Egyptians behind the 
children of Israel. He has hedged them in on either hand. 
He has spread out the unfordable sea before them. He 
has so beset them with difficulties, when they were attempt- 
ing to live for right, for duty, and for liberty, that they 
have been like Israel. 

When men stand for a moral principle, their troubles are 
not a presumption that they are in the wrong. Since the 
world began, men that have stood for the right have had to 
stand for it, as Christ stood for the world, suffering for 
victory. 

In the history which belongs peculiarly to us, over and 
over again the same thing has occurred. In that grand be- 
ginning struggle in which Luther figured so prominently, 
he stood in a doubtful conflict. He was in the minority; 
he was vehemently pressed with enemies on every side; 
nine times out of ten during his whole life the odds were 
against him. And yet he died victorious, and we reap the 
fruit of his victory. 

In one of the consequences of that noble struggle, the 
assertion in the Netherlands of civil liberty and religious 
toleration, the same thing took place. Almost the entire 
globe was against this amphibious republic, until England 
cared for them; and England cared for them very doubt- 
fully and very imperfectly. All the reigning influences, 
all the noblest of the commanding men of the Continent, 
were against them. The conflict was a long and dubious 
one, in which they suffered extremely, and conquered 
through their suffering. 



THE BATTLE SET TV ATT AY. 273 

In the resulting struggle in England, which was bor- 
rowed largely from the Continent, — the Puritan uprising, 
the Puritan struggle, — the same thing occurred. The 
Puritans were enveloped in darkness. Their enemies were 
more than their friends. The issue was exceedingly doubt- 
ful. Their very victory began in apparent defeat. For 
when at last, wearied and discouraged, they could no 
longer abide the restriction of their liberty in England, 
they fled away to plant colonies upon these shores. On the 
sea did they venture, but the ocean, black and wild, before 
they left it was covered with winter. 

In every one of these instances darkness and the flood 
lay before the champions of truth and rectitude. God in 
his providence said to them, though they were without 
apparent instrumentalities, " Go forward ! Venture every- 
thing ! Endure everything ! Yield the precious truths 
never ! Live forever by them ! Die with f/iein, if you die 
at all." 

The whole lesson of the past, then, is that safety and 
honor come by holding fast to one's principles; by press- 
ing them with courage; by going into darkness and defeat 
cheerfully for them. 

And now our turn has come. Right before us lies the 
Red Sea of war. It is red indeed. There is blood in it. 
We have come to the very edge of it, and the Word of 
God to us to-day is, " Speak unto this people that they go 
forward ! " It is not of our procuring. It is not of our wish- 
ing. It is not our hand that has struck the first stroke, nor 
drawn the first blood. We have prayed against it. We 
have struggled against it. Ten thousand times we have 
cried, " Let this cup pass from us ! " It has been overruled. 
We have yielded everything but manhood, and principle, 
and truth, and honor, and we have heard the voice of God 
saying, " Yield these never ! " And these not being yielded, 
war has been let loose upon this land. 

Now, let us look both ways into this matter, that we may 
decide what it is our duty to do. 

I. There is no fact susceptible of proof in history, if it 
be not true that this Federal Government was created for 



274 



PA TRIO TIC ADDRESSES. 



the purposes of justice and liberty; and not liberty, either, 
with the construction that traitorous or befooled heads are 
attempting to give it, — liberty with a devil in it ! We know 
very well what was the breadth and the clarity of the faith 
of those men who formed the early constitutions of this 
nation. If there was any peculiarity in their faith, it was 
that their notion of liberty was often extravagant. But 
there was no doubtfulness in their position. And the in- 
struments which accompanied and preceded it, and the 
opinions of the men that framed it, put this fact beyond 
all controversy: that the Constitution of the United States 
was meant to be as we now hold it, as we now defend it, 
as we have held it, and as we have been defending it. And 
at length even this is conceded, as I shall have occasion 
to say further on, by the enemies of liberty in this country. 
The Vice-President of the so-called Southern Confederacy 
has stated recently that there was a blunder made in the 
construction of our Constitution on this very truth of 
universal liberty, thus admitting the grand fact that that 
immortal instrument, as held by the North, embodies the 
views of those who framed it; and that those views are 
unmistakably in favor of liberty to all. 

2. There can be no disputing the fact that, from com- 
mercial and political causes, an element of slavery which 
had a temporary refuge in the beginning in this land 
swelled to an unforeseen and unexpected power, and for 
fifty years has held the administrative power of the country 
in its hands. No man acquainted with our politics 
hesitates to say, that while the spirit of liberty first sug- 
gested our national ideas and fashioned our national insti- 
tutions, after that work was done the government passed 
into the hands of the slave-power; and that that power has 
administered these institutions during the last fifty j'ears 
for its own purposes, or in a manner that has been antag- 
onistic to the interests of this country. 

3. Against this growing usurpation for the last twenty- 
five years there has been rising up and organizing a proper 
legal constitutional opposition, wishing not the circum- 
scription or injury of any section in this land, but endeav- 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 275 

oring to keep our institutions out of the hands of despotism 
and on the side of liberty. For twenty-five years there 
has been a struggle to see to it that those immortal instru- 
ments of liberty should not be wrested from their original 
intent, — that they should be maintained for the objects for 
which they were created. 

4. What are the means that have been employed to 
maintain our institutions ? Free discussion. That, simply. 
We have gone before the people, in every proper form. 
For twenty years of defeat, though of growing influence, 
we have argued the questions of human rights and human 
liberty, and the doctrines of the Constitution and of our 
fathers; and we have maintained that the children should 
stand where the fathers did. At last the continent has con- 
sented. We began as a handful, in the midst of mobs and 
derision and obloquy. We have gone through the ex- 
perience of Gethsemane and Calvary. The cause of Christ 
among his poor has suffered as the Master suffered, again 
and again and again; and at last the public sentiment of 
the North has been revolutionized. What! revolutionized 
away from the doctrines of the fathers? No; back to the 
doctrines of the fathers. Revolutionized against our insti- 
tutions? No; in favor of our institutions. We have taken 
simply the old American principles. That is the history 
very simply stated. The children have gone back to the 
old landmarks. We stand for the doctrines and instru- 
ments that the fathers gave us. 

5. The vast majority of this nation are now on the side 
of our American institutions, according to their original 
intent. We ask only this: that our government may be 
what it was made to be, — an instrument of justice and 
liberty. We ask no advantages, no new prerogatives, no 
privileges whatsoever. We merely say, " Let there be no 
intestine revolution in our institutions, but let them stand 
as they were made, and for the purposes for which they 
were created." Is there anything unreasonable, anything 
wrong in that? Is it wrong to reason? Is it wrong to 
discuss ? Is it wrong to go before a free people with their 
own business, and, in the field, in the caucus, in the assembly. 



276 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

in all deliberative bodies, to argue fairly, and express the re- 
sult by the American means, — the omnipotence of the vote ? 
Is that wrong ? It is what we have been doing for the last 
few years. By the prescribed methods of the Constitution, 
and in the spirit of liberty which it embodied and evoked, we 
have done our proper work. Before God we cleanse our 
hands of all imputation of designing injustice or of seek- 
ing wrong. We have not sought any one's damage. We 
have aimed at no invidious restrictions for any. We have 
simply said, " God, through our fathers, committed to us 
certain institutions, and we will maintain them to the end 
of our lives, and to the end of time." 

6. Seven States, however, in a manner revolutionary 
not only of government, but in violation of the rights and 
customs of their own people, have disowned their country 
and mdde war upon it ! There has been a spirit of patriot- 
ism in the North; but never, within my memory, in the 
South. I never heard a man from the South speak of him- 
self as an American. Men from the South always speak 
of themselves as Southerners. When I was abroad, 
I never spoke of myself as a Northerner, but always as a 
citizen of the United States. I love our country; and it is 
a love of the countrjr, and not a love of the North alone, 
that pervades the people of the North. There has never 
been witnessed such patience, such self-denial, such mag- 
nanimity, such true patriotism, under such circumstan- 
ces, as that which has been manifested in the North. 
And in the South the feeling has been sectional, local. 
The people there have been proud, not that they be- 
long to the nation, but that they were born where the 
sun burns. They are hot, narrow, and boastful, — for out 
of China there is not so much conceit as exists among 
them. They have been devoid of that large spirit which 
takes in the race, and the nation, and its institutions, and 
its history, and that which its history prophesies, — the pre- 
rogative of carrying the banner of liberty to the Pacific 
from the Atlantic. 

Now, these States, in a spirit entirely in agreement with 
their past developments, have revolutionized and disowned 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 277 

the United States of America, and set up a so-called 
government of their own. Shall we, now, go forward 
under these circumstances? 

For the first time in the history of this nation there is a 
deliberate and extensive preparation for war, and this 
country has received the deadly thrust of bullet and 
bayonet from the hands of her own children. If we could 
have prevented it, this should not have taken place. But 
it is a fact ! It hath happened ! The question is no longer 
a question of choice. The war is brought to us. Shall 
we retreat, or shall we accept the hard conditions on which 
we are to maintain the grounds of our fathers ? Hearing 
the voice of God in his providence saying, " Go forward ! " 
shall we go ? 

I go with those that go furthest in describing the wretch- 
edness and wickedness and monstrosity of war. The only 
point on which I should probably differ from any is this : 
that while war is an evil so presented to our senses that we 
measure and estimate it, there are other evils just as great, 
and much more terrible, whose deadly mischiefs have no 
power upon the senses. I hold that it is ten thousand 
times better to have war than to have slavery. I hold that 
to be corrupted silently by giving up manhood, by degen- 
erating, by becoming cravens, by yielding one right after 
another, is infinitely worse than war. Why, war is resur- 
rection in comparison w^ith the state to which we should 
be brought by such a course. And although war is a ter- 
rible evil, there are other evils that are more terrible. In 
our own peculiar case, though I would say nothing to 
garnish it, nothing to palliate it, nothing to alleviate it, 
nothing to make you more willing to have it, nothing to 
remove the just abhorrence which every man and patriot 
should have for it, yet I would say that, in the particular 
condition into which we have been brought, it will not be 
an unmixed evil. Eighty years of unexampled prosperity 
have gone far toward making us a people that judge of 
moral questions by their relation to our convenience and 
ease. We are in great danger of becoming a people that 
shall measure by earthly rules, — b}' the lowest standard of 



278 



PA TRIO TIC ADDRESSES. 



a commercial expediency. We have never suffered for our 
own principles. And now if it please God to do that 
which daily we pray that he may avert, — if it please God 
to wrap this nation in war, — one result will follow : we 
shall be called to suffer for our faith. We shall be called to 
the heroism of doing and daring, and bearing and suffer- 
ing, for the things which we believe to be vital to the salva- 
tion of this people. 

On what conditions, then, may we retreat from this war, 
and on what conditions may we have peace ? 

1. We may do it on condition that two-thirds of this 
nation shall implicitly yield up to the dictation of one- 
third. You can have peace on that ground. Italy could 
have had peace at the hands of Francis II. They had 
nothing to do but to say to that tyrant, " Here is my neck, 
put your foot on it," to obtain peace. The people of Hun- 
gary may have peace, if they will only say to him of Vienna, 
" Reign over us as you please; our lives are in your hands." 
There is never any trouble in having peace, if men will 
yield themselves to the control of those that have no busi- 
ness to control them. Two-thirds of this nation unques- 
tionably stand on the side of the original articles of our 
Constitution and in the service of liberty, and one-third 
deny and reject them. Now if the two-thirds will give up 
to the one-third, we can have peace — for a little while. 

2. We can have peace if we will legalize and establish 
the right of any discontented community to rebel, and to 
set up intestine governments within the government of the 
United States. Yield that principle, demoralize govern- 
ment, and you can have peace — for a little while. You 
cannot yield that principle and not demoralize government. 
And if it is right for seven States on the Gulf to secede, it 
is the right of seven States on the Lakes. If it is the right 
of seven States on the Lakes, it is the right of five or three 
States on the Ohio River. If it is the right of a number 
of States, it is the right of one State. And if it is the right 
of any State, there is not a State, a half of a State, a 
county, or a town, that has not the same right. It is the 
right of disintegration. It is a right that aims at the 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 279 

destruction of the attraction of governmental cohesion. 
It is a right that invalidates all power in government. And 
if you will grant this right; if you will consent to have 
this government broken up; if you are willing that our 
country should degenerate to the condition of wrangling 
and rival States, — you can have peace — for a little while. 

3. We can have peace if we will agree fundamentally to 
change our Constitution, and, instead of maintaining a 
charter of universal freedom, to write it out as a deliberate 
charter of oppression. 

Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the so-called Con- 
federate States, declared, in a formal speech, that our 
Constitution was framed on a fundamental mistake, inas- 
much as it took it for granted that men were born for 
freedom and equality. They have expunged the doctrine 
of universal liberty, and put in its place the doctrine of 
liberty for the strong and servitude for the weak. It is said 
that the African race, by reason of their nationality and 
savagism, are not fit for liberty, and that the white race, 
by reason of their nationality and civilization, are fit to 
govern them. It is merely a plea that weak persons are 
not fit to take care of themselves, and that strong persons 
are fit to take care of them; and it is a plea that is just as 
applicable to any other peoples as to the Anglo-Saxons 
and the Africans. It is simply a doctrine that might makes 
right. It may be stated in this form: "You are weak and 
I am strong, and I am therefore your lawful master." If 
it is good for the Africans and the Anglo-Saxons, it is good 
for all other races. And if it is good in reference to races, 
it is good in reference to individuals. Therefore there is 
not a workman, there is not a poor man, there is not a man 
that is low in station, at the North, who is not interested in 
this matter, who is not touched in his rights, and who is 
not insulted by the spirit that is latent in the new Consti- 
tution of the so-called Confederate States. It holds that 
there is appointed of God a governing class and a class to 
be governed, — a class that are born governors because they 
are strong and smart and well-to-do, and a class that are 
born servants because they are poor and weak and unable 



2 8o PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to take care of themselves. Now take that glorious, flam- 
ing sentence in the Declaration of Independence, which 
asserts the right of every man to life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness, and which pronounces that right to be 
alike inalienable to all, — take that and strike it out, and 
put in its place this infernal article of the new Constitution 
of the Southern States, and you can have peace — for a 
little while. There is no trouble about having peace. 
What an unreasonable people we are ! If we will only pay 
enough for peace we can have it. 

This diabolical principle is also deliberately held and 
advocated by the churches of the South. The Southern 
churches are all sound on the question of the Bible, and 
infidel on the question of its contents ! They believe that 
this is God's Book; they believe that this Book is the 
world's charter; and they believe that it teaches the relig- 
ion of servitude. Every sermon that I have received within 
the last year from the South has been a various echo of 
this one atrocious idea, held in common with all the des- 
potic preachers of Europe. Any man that has read Robert 
South's sermons, has read over and over again all the argu- 
ments contained in the raw, jejune productions of Southern 
clerical advocates for oppression. In all the discussions 
between Milton and Salmasius, and in all the writings of 
Roman priests that have sought to bolster up sacerdotal 
rule, these arguments have been put forth far more ably 
than our unscholarly Southerners have put them forth. 
But this is the ground which has been taken by the Chris- 
tian Church of the South: that in Christ Jesus all men are 
not created equal, — that white masters are, but that black 
servants are not ! 

And that is not all. Not only is this new government 
framed on this ground, and not only have all the churches 
of the Sofith taken this ground, so that it may be said of 
the Southern Confederacy as it was said of one of the old 
revolted tribes, "They have a priest to their house," but 
there has just now been raised up in the North a club of 
the same kind, — a society for the promotion of national 
unity, on the basis of a change of our national instruments 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 281 

of government. This society proposes to restore peace to 
this country. And how? Exactly as you restore uni- 
formity of color in a room where some things are red, some 
blue, and some yellow, — by blowing the light out so that 
in darkness all things will be of the same color ! We are 
very much divided in this land, one part believing in lib- 
erty, and the other believing in servitude; and it is pro- 
posed to bring these two parts together in unity, by 
destroying the distinction between them. What is this 
society's own statement, as contained in the letter which 
they have put forth with their articles ? They make this 
formal assertion: that that portion of our original Declara- 
tion of Independence which makes all men free and equal 
has been misinterpreted, or is false. They endeavor to 
say it softly, but it is a thing that cannot be said softly. 
To breathe it, to whisper it, makes it louder than thunder ! 
Indeed, it is true that men are not physiologically equal. 
No man ever believed that they were. They do not weigh 
alike. They differ in respect to bone and tissue. They 
are not the same as regards mental caliber. Their dynamic 
forces are different. They are not capable of exerting the 
same amount of political influence. In the nations of Europe 
it was held that the royal head,y//';7' Divina, had privileges 
which the nobles had not; that there belonged to the 
nobles prerogatives which did not belong to the common- 
alty; and that the political rights of the great common 
people were to be graduated according to their status in 
society. But our fathers said, God gives the same political 
rights to all alike. The people are king, and the people 
are nobles. They are equal in this: that they all stand 
before the same law of justice, and that justice is to be the 
same to one as to another. The richest and the poorest, 
the wisest and the most ignorant, the highest and the low- 
est, are on an equality before the law. The Declaration 
of Independence taught simply that every man born into 
life was born with such dignities, with such a nature con- 
ferred upon him, that, as a child of God, he has a right to 
confront government and legislature and laws, and say, " I 
demand, in common with every other man, equal justice, 



282 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

equal protection, to life, to liberty, and in the pursuit of hap- 
piness." And this is what our society in the North for the 
promotion of national unity undertake, in their first article, 
to say is a lie ! 

Now, you can have your American eagle as you want it. 
If, with the South, you will strike out his eyes, then you 
shall stand well with Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens of the 
Confederate States; if, with the Christians of the South, 
you will pluck off his wings, you shall stand well with the 
Southern churches; and if, with the new peace-makers that 
have risen up in the North, you will pull out his tail- 
feathers, you shall stand well with the society for the pro- 
motion of national unity ! But when you have stricken 
out his eyes so that he can no longer see, when you have 
plucked off his wings so that he can no longer fly, and 
when you have pulled out his guiding tail-feathers so th^t 
he can no longer steer himself, but rolls in the dirt a mere 
buzzard, then will he be worth preserving? Such an eagle 
it is that they mean to depict upon the banner of America ! 

Now if any man is fierce for peace, and is willing to pay 
the price demanded for it, he can have it. On those condi- 
tions you can have peace as long as the Jews did. For three 
guilty days they were rid of the Saviour, and then he rose 
from the grave, with eternal power on his head, and be- 
yond all touch of weakness or death, then ascended on 
high to the Source of eternal power, there to live, and to 
live forever ! 

4. We must accordingly, if we go on to purchase peace 
on these terms, become partners in slavery, and consent, 
for the sake of peace, to ratify this gigantic evil. We can- 
not wink at it. We are called to bear overt witness either 
for or against it. Every State in this Union, according to 
the new Constitution, must be open to slavery. It is the 
design of not a few men at the North to make this the 
issue at the next election: whether we shall not reconstruct 
this government according to the Constitution of the Con- 
federate States,' one feature of which is that slavery shall 
have liberty to go wherever it pleases, — that slavery shall 
have the right of incursion to any part of this country. If 



THE BATTLE SET TV ARRAY. 283 

you consent to such a reconstruction as is proposed, you 
must open every one of your States to the incoming of 
slavery. Not only that, but every territory on this continent 
is to be opened to slavery. We are called to take the exec- 
utive lancet, and the virus of slavery, and lift up the arm 
of this virgin continent and inoculate it with this terrific 
poison. If you will do these things, you are to be per- 
mitted to escape war. 

5. Next in order must of course be silence. When we 
have gone so far, we shall no longer have any right of dis- 
cussion, of debate, of criticism, — we shall no longer have 
any right of agitation, as it is called. 

On these conditions we may have peace. If we reject 
these conditions we are to have separation, demoralization 
of government, and war. 

Now are you prepared to take peace on these conditions ? 
You will not get it on any other conditions. If you have 
peace, you are to stigmatize the whole history of the past; 
you are to yield your religious convictions; you are to give 
over the government into the hands of factious revolution- 
ists; you are to suppress every manly sentiment, and every 
sympathy for the oppressed. Will you take peace on such a 
ground as that? So far as I myself am concerned, I utterly 
abhor peace on any such grounds. Give me war redder than 
blood, and fiercer than fire, if this terrific infliction is nec- 
essary that I may maintain my faith of God in human 
liberty, my faith of the fathers in the instruments of liberty, 
my faith in this land as the appointed abode and chosen 
refuge of liberty for all the earth ! War is terrible, but that 
abyss of ignominy is yet more terrible ! 

What, then, if we will go forward in the providence of 
God, and maintain our integrity, are the steps that are 
before us ? 

I. Instead of yielding our convictions, it is time to 
cleanse them, to deepen them, to give them more power, 
to make them more earnest and more religious. There is 
no reason, now, why we should compromise. There is 
nothing to be gained by compromising. And it is time 
that parents should talk on the great doctrine of human 



284 PA TR I one ADDRESSES. 

rights in the family, and indoctrinate their children with 
an abhorrence for slavery, and a love for liberty. It is 
time for schools to have their scholars instructed in these 
matters. It is time for every church to make its pews 
flame and glow witii enthusiasm for freedom, and with 
hatred for oppression. While the air of the South is full 
of pestilent doctrines of slavery, accursed be our com- 
munities if we will not be as zealous and enthusiastic for 
liberty as they are against it ! If their air is filled with the 
storm and madness of oppression, let ours be full of the 
sweet peace and love of liberty ! 

2. We must draw the lines. A great many men have 
been on both sides. A great many men have been thrown 
backward and forward, like a shuttle, from one side to the 
other. It is now time for every man to choose one side or 
the other. We want no shufflers; we want no craven cow- 
ards; we want men; we want every man to stand forth, 
and say, " I am for liberty, and the Constitution, and the 
country, as our fathers gave them to us," or else, " I am 
against them." 

Thousands, thank God, of great men have spoken to us; 
but I think that the war-voice of Sumter has done more to 
bring men together, and to produce unity of feeling among 
them on this subject, than the most eloquent-tongued 
orator. 

We must say in this matter, my friends, as Christ said, 
" He that is not for us is against us." I will have no com- 
merce, I will not cross palms with a man that disowns 
liberty in such a struggle as is before us ! I will not give 
him shelter or house-room — except as a convicted sinner; 
then I will take him, as the prodigal was taken, in his 
rags and nakedness ! But so long as he stands up with 
impudent face against the things that are dearest to God's 
heart, and dearest to the instincts of this people, I shall 
treat him as what he is, — a trait )r ! There ought to be but 
one feeling in the North, and that ought to be a feeling 
for liberty, which should sweep through the land like a 
mighty wind. 

3. We must not stop to measure costs, — especially the 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 285 

costs of going forward, — on any basis so mean and narrow 
as that of pecuniary prosperity. We must put our honor 
and religion into this struggle. God is helping you; for, 
no matter how much you deplore the state of things, you 
cannot help yourselves. You may take counsel with your 
Till and Safe and Bank, you may look at your accounts on 
both sides, but your talking and looking will make no 
difference with your affairs. The time is past in which 
these things could be of any avail. This matter must now 
be settled. You must have a part in settling it. The ques- 
tion is whether that shall be a manly or an ignoble part ! 

There are many reasons which make a good and thorough 
battle necessary. The Southern men are infatuated. 
They will not have peace. They are in arms. They have 
fired upon the American flag ! That glorious banner has 
been borne through every climate, all over the globe, and 
for fifty years not a land or people has been found to scorn 
it, or dishonor it. At home, among the degenerate people 
of our own land, among Southern citizens, for the first 
time, has this glorious national flag been abased, and 
trampled to the ground ! It is for our sons reverently to 
lift it, and to bear it full high again, to victory and national 
supremacy ! Our arms, in this peculiar exigency, can lay 
the foundation of future union, in mutual respect. The 
South firmly believes that cowardice is the universal attri- 
bute of Northern men ! Until they are most thoroughly 
convinced to the contrary, they will never cease arrogancy 
and aggression. But if now it please God to crown our 
arms with victory, we shall have gone far toward impressing 
Southern men with salutary respect. Good soldiers, brave 
men, hard fighting, will do more toward quiet than all the 
compromises and empty, wagging tongues in the world. 
Our reluctance to break peace, our unwillingness to shed 
blood, our patience, have all been misinterpreted. The more 
we have been generous and forbearing, the more thoroughly 
were they sure that it was because we dared not fight ! 

With the North is the strength, the population, the 
courage. There is not elsewhere on this continent that 
breadth of courage — the courage of a man in distinction 



286 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

from the courage of a brute beast — which there is in the 
free States of the North. It was General Scott who said 
that the New Englanders were the hardest to get into a 
fight, and the most terrible to meet in a conflict, of any 
men on the globe. 

We have no braggart courage; we have no courage that 
rushes into an affray for the love of fighting. We have 
that courage which comes from calm intelligence. We 
have that courage which comes from broad moral senti- 
ment. We have no anger, but we have indignation. We 
have no irritable passion, but we have fixed will. We re- 
gard war and contest as terrible evils; but when, detesting 
them as we do, we are roused to enter into them, our 
courage will be of the measure of our detestation. You 
may be sure that the cause which can stir up the feelings 
of the North sufticiently to bring them into such a conflict, 
will develop in them a courage that will be terrific to the 
men who have to meet it. I could wish no worse punish- 
ment to those that decry the courage of the North, than 
that they shall have to meet her when she is once brought 
out and fairly in the field. 

4. We must aim at a peace built on foundations so solid, 
of God's immutable truth, that nothing can reach to un- 
settle it. Let this conflict between liberty and slavery 
never come up again. Better have it thoroughly settled, 
though it take a score of years to settle it, than to have an 
intermittent fever for the next century, breaking out at 
every five or ten years. It is bad, you say. That has 
nothing to do with the point. Your house is on fire, and 
the question is, What will you do ? You are in the struggle, 
and the question is. Will you go through it in the spirit of 
5'our ancestors, in the spirit of Christians and patriots, in 
the spirit that belongs to the age of the world in which 
you live, and settle it so that it shall not be in the power 
of mischief to unsettle it? Or will you dally ? Will you 
delay ? I know which you will do. This question is noiv 
going forivard to a settlement. 

5. Let not our feelings be vengeful nor savage. We can 
go into this conflict with a spirit just as truly Christian as 



THE BATTLE SET IN ARRAY. 2S7 

any that ever inspired us in the performance of a Christian 
duty. Indignation is very different from anger; con- 
science from revenge. Let tlie spirit of fury be far from 
us; but a spirit of earnestness, of willingness to do, to 
suffer, and to die, if need be, for our land and our princi- 
ples, — that may be a religious spirit. We may consecrate 
it with prayer. 

All through the struggle of the Revolution, men there 
were that preached on the Sabbath, and w^hen not preach- 
ing went from tent to tent and performed kind offices to 
those that were sick or wounded, cheered those that were 
in despondency, encouraged those whose trials were severe, 
and led or accompanied their brethren to those conflicts 
which achieved liberty. 

I believe that the old spirit will be found yet in the 
Church; and that in that patriotism which dares to do as 
well as teach, laymen and officers and pastors will be found 
no whit behind the Revolutionary day. 

It is trying to live in suspense, to be in the tormenting 
whirl of rumor, now to see the banner up, and now to see 
it trailing in the dust. Early yesterday things seemed 
inauspicious. Toward evening all appeared calm and fair. 
To-day disastrous and depressing rumors were current. 
This evening I came hither sad from the tidings that that 
stronghold which seemed to guard the precious name 
and lasting fame of the noble and gallant Anderson had 
been given up; but since I came into this desk I have received 
a dispatch from one of our most illustrious citizens, saying 
that Sumter is reinforced, and that Moultrie is the fort that 
has been destroyed. \_Tremcndous ami prolonged applause, 
expressed by enthusiastic cheers, clapping of hands, and waving 
of handkerchiefs^ But what if the rising sun to-morrow 
should reverse the message ? What if the tidings that 
greet you in the morning should be but the echo of the old 
tidings of disaster? You live in hours in which you are to 
suffer suspense. Now lifted up, you will be prematurely 
cheering, and now cast down, you will be prematurely 
desponding. Look forward, then, past the individual steps, 
the various vicissitudes of experience, to the glorious end 



2 88 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

that is coming ! Look beyond the present to that assured 
victory which awaits us in the future. 

Young men, you will live to see more auspicious days. 
Later sent, delayed in your voyage into life, you will see 
the bright consummation, in part at least, of that victory of 
this land, by which, with mortal throes, it shall cast out 
from itself all morbific influences, and cleanse itself from 
slavery. And you that are in middle life shall seethe ulti- 
mate triumph advancing beyond anything that you have 
yet known. The scepter shall not depart. The govern- 
ment shall not be shaken from its foundations. 

Let no man, then, in this time of peril, fail to associate 
himself with that cause which is to be so entirely glorious. 
Let not your children, as they carry you to your burial, be 
ashamed to write upon your tombstone the truth of your 
history. Let every man that lives and owns himself an 
American, take the side of true American principles; — 
liberty for one, and liberty for all; liberty now, and liberty 
forever; liberty as the foundation of government, and 
liberty as the basis of union; liberty as against revolution, 
liberty, against anarchy, and liberty, against slavery; liberty 
here, and liberty everywhere, the world through ! 

When the trumpet of God has sounded, and that grand 
procession is forming; as Italy has risen, and is wheeling 
into the ranks; as Hungary, though mute, is beginning to 
beat time, and make ready for the march; as Poland, 
having long slept, has dreamt of liberty again, and is wak- 
ing; as the thirty million serfs are hearing the roll of the 
drum, and are going forward toward citizenship, — let it not 
be your miserable fate, nor mine, to live in a nation that 
shall be seen reeling and staggering and wallowing in the 
orgies of despotism ? We, too, have a right to march in 
this grand procession of liberty. By the memory of the 
fathers; by the sufferings of the Puritan ancestry; by the 
teaching of our national history; by our faith and hope of 
religion; by every line of the Declaration of Independence, 
and every article of our Constitution; by what we are and 
what our progenitors were, — we have a right to walk fore- 
most in this procession of nations tov.^ard the bright future 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 



" Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be dis- 
played because of the truth." — Psalms Ix. 4. 



From the earliest periods nations seem to have gone 
forth to war under some banner. Sometimes it has been 
merely the pennon of a leader, and was only a rallying 
signal. So, doubtless, began the habit of carrying banners, 
to direct men in the confusion of conflict, that the leader 
might gather his followers around him when he himself 
was liable to be lost out of their sight. 

Later in the history of nations the banner acquired other 
uses and peculiar significance from the parties, the orders, 
the houses, or governments, that adopted it. At length, 
as consolidated governments drank up into themselves all 
these lesser independent authorities, banners became sig- 
nificant chiefly of national authority. And thus in our day 
every people has its peculiar flag. There is no civilized 
nation without its banner. 

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not 
the flag, but the nation itself. And whatever may be its 
symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the gov- 
ernment, the principles, the truths, the history, that belong 
to the nation that sets it forth. When the French tricolor 
rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the new-found 
Italian flag is unfurled, we see resurrected Italy. When 
the other three-colored Hungarian flag shall be lifted to 
the wind, we shall see in it the long buried, but never dead, 
principles of Hungarian liberty. When the united crosses 
of St. Andrew and St. George, on a fiery ground, set forth 

* Delivered to two companies of the "Brooklyn Fourteenth," many of 
them members of Plymouth Church. The Church on that day contrib- 
uted $3,000 to aid in the equipment of this Regiment. 
19 



290 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the banner of Old England, we see not the cloth merely: 
there rises up before the mind the idea of that great 
monarchy. 

This nation has a banner, too; and until recently wherever 
it streamed abroad men saw day-break bursting on their 
eyes. For until lately the American flag has been a sym- 
bol of Liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag 
on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the 
sea carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope to 
the captive, and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it 
were to the pining nations like the bright morning stars of 
God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. 
As at early dawn the stars shine forth even while it grows 
light, and then as the sun advances that light breaks into 
banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and 
intense white striving together, and ribbing the horizon 
with bars effulgent, so, on the American flag, stars and 
beams of many-colored light shine out together. And 
wherever this flag comes, and men behold it, they see in 
its sacred emblazonry no ramping lion, and no fierce eagle; 
no embattled castles, or insignia of imperial authority; 
they see the symbols of light. It is the banner of Dawn. 
It means Liberty; and the galley-slave, the poor, oppressed 
conscript, the trodden-down creature of foreign despotism, 
sees in the American flag that very promise and prediction 
of God, — " The people which sat in darkness saw a great 
light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of 
death light is sprung up." 

Is this a mere fancy? On the 4th of July, 1776, the Declara- 
tion of American Independence was confirmed and promul- 
gated. Already for more than a year the Colonies had 
been at war with the mother country. But until this time 
there had been no American flag. The flag of the mother 
country covered us during all our colonial period; and 
each State that chose had a separate and significant State 
banner. 

In 1777, within a few days of one year after the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and two years and more after the 
war began, upon the 14th of June, the Congress of the 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 291 

Colonies, or the Confederated States, assembled, and 
ordained this glorious National Flag which now we hold 
and defend, and advanced it full high before God and all 
men, as the Flag of Liberty. It was no holiday flag, gor- 
geously emblazoned for gayety or vanity. It was a solemn 
national signal. When that banner first unrolled to the 
sun, it was the symbol of all those holy truths and pur- 
poses which brought together the Colonial American 
Congress ! 

Consider the men who devised and set forth this banner. 
The Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Jays, the Franklins, the 
Hamiltons, the Jeffersons, the Adamses, — these men were 
all either officially connected with it or consulted concern- 
ing it. They were men that had taken their lives in their 
hands, and consecrated all their worldly possessions — for 
what ? For the doctrines, and for the personal fact, of 
liberty, — for the right of all men to liberty. They had just 
given forth to the world a Declaration of Facts and Faiths 
out of which sprung the Constitution, and on which they 
now planted this new-devised flag of our Union. 

If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to 
him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, 
what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Rev- 
olutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a 
valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish 
the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever 
known, or has since known, — the right of men to their own 
selves and to their liberties. 

In solemn conclave our fathers had issued to the world 
that glorious manifesto, the Declaration of Independence. 
A little later, that the fundamental principles of liberty 
might have the best organization, they gave to' this land 
our imperishable Constitution. Our flag means, then, all 
that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War; it means 
all that the Declaration of Independence meant; it means 
all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for 
justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag 
carries American ideas, American history and American 
feelings. Beginning with the Colonies, and coming down 



292 . PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to our time, in its sacred heraldry, in its glorious insignia, 
it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea: 
Divine right of liberty in man. Every color means liberty; 
every thread means liberty; every form of star and beam 
or stripe of light means liberty: not lawlessness, not li- 
cense; but organized, institutional liberty, — liberty through 
law, and laws for liberty ! 

This American flag was the safeguard of liberty. Not 
an atom of crown was allowed to go into its insignia. Not 
a symbol of authority in the ruler was permitted to go 
into it. It was an ordinance of liberty by the people for 
the people. That it meant, that it means, and, by the bless- 
ing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time ! 

For God Almighty be thanked ! that, when base and de- 
generate Southern men desired to set up a nefarious op- 
pression, at war with every legend and every instinct of 
old American history, they could not do it under our 
bright flag ! Its stars smote them with light like arrows 
shot from the bow of God. They must have another flag 
for such work; and they forged an infamous flag to do an 
infamous work, and, God be blessed ! left our bright and 
starry banner untainted and untouched by disfigurement 
and disgrace ! I thank them that they took another flag 
to do the Devil's work, and left our flag to^o the work of 
God ! [Applause.] So may it ever be, that men that 
would forge oppression shall be obliged to do it under 
some other banner than the Stars and Stripes. 

If ever the sentiment of our text, then, was fulfilled, it 
has been in our gloriaus American banner: 

" Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee." 

Our fathers were God-fearing men. Into their hands 
God committed this banner, and they have handed it down 
to us. And I thank God that it is still in the hands of 
men that fear him and love righteousness. 

" Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that 
it may be displayed." 

And displayed it shall be. Advanced full against the 
morning light, and borne with the growing and glowing 
day, it shall take the last ruddy beams of the night, and 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 293 

from the Atlantic wave, clear across with eagle flight to 
the Pacific, that banner shall float, meaning all the liberty 
which it has ever meant ! From the North, where snows 
and mountain ice stand solitary, clear to the glowing 
tropics and the Gulf, that banner that has hitherto waved 
shall wave and wave forever, — every star, every band, 
every thread and fold significant of Liberty ! \_Grcat ap- 
plause^ 

[The speaker paused to check the too demonstrative enthusiasm 
of the audience, and continued:^ I do not doubt your patriot- 
ism. I know it is hard for men that are full of feeling not 
to give expression to it; yet excuse me if I request you to 
refrain from demonstrations of applause while I am speak- 
ing. It is not because I think Sunday too good a day, nor 
the church too holy a place for patriotic Christian men to 
express their feelings at such a time as this, and in behalf 
of such sentiments, but because by too frequent repetition 
applause becomes stale and common, that I make this re- 
quest. Besides, outward expression is not our way. We 
are rather of a silent stock. We let our feelings work in- 
wardly, so that they may have deeper channels and fuller 
floods. 

" Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that 
it may be displayed because of the truth." 

Because of that very truth we will display it ! Not in 
mere national pride, not in any wantonness of vanity, not 
merely because we have been reared to honor it, not be- 
cause we have an hereditary reverence for it, but with a 
full intelligence of what it is and what it means, and be- 
cause we love the truth that is written in lines of living 
light all over it, we will advance it and maintain it against 
all comers from earth and hell. 

The history of this banner is all on the side of rational 
liberty. Under it rode Washington and his armies, — 
Washington, much beloved and much abused by those that 
are his eulogists, who have described all that he was ex- 
cept his love of liberty, which has been forgotten. But 
Washington would be like a man without a heart, if you 
left out of him that high, almost imperial chivalric love of 



294 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

liberty for every human being. Under this banner rode he 
and his armies. Before it Burgoyne laid down his arms. 
It waved on the highlands at West Point. It floated over 
old Fort Montgomery, as over another Montgomery* it 
shall float ! When Arnold would have surrendered these 
valuable fortresses and precious legacies, his night was 
turned into day, and his treachery was driven away, by 
the beams of light from this starry banner. It cheered 
our army, driven out from around New York, and in 
their painful pilgrimages through New Jersey. Sacred 
State of New Jersey ! small, but comely and rich and im- 
perishable in the drops of precious blood that have re- 
deemed her sainted soil from barrenness. In New Jersey 
more than in almost every other State grows the trailiug- 
arbiitus. Methinks it is sacred drops of Pilgrim blood that 
come forth in beauteous flowers on this sandiest of soils, 
for this sweet blossom that lays its cheek on the very snow 
is the true Pilgrim's Mayflower / This banner streamed in 
light over the soldiers' heads at Valley Forge and at Mor- 
ristown. It crossed the waters rolling with ice at Trenton, 
and when its stars gleamed in the cold morning with 
victory, a new day of hope dawned on the despondency of 
this nation. When South Carolina, in the Revolutionary 
struggle, utterly forgot what she never well remembered, 
courage and personal liberty, and yielded herself, — the 
only one, ignominious and infamous, of all the Revolution- 
ary band of States, that gave in an adhesion again to the 
British government, — when she forgot courage and per- 
sonal liberty, and yielded herself up, and made her peace, 
solitary and alone, with British generals, then it was this 
banner that led on the Virginia forces who conquered both 
the British and Carolinian armies, and brought the State 
again into our confederacy. Alas that the head should 
become the tail ! Alas that old Virginia, that brought 
back the recreant South Carolina, should be tied to, and 
be dragged about the rebel camp at the tail of that same 
South Carolina ! 



*At that time Montgomery, Alabama, was the cajjital of the Southern 
Confederacy, afterwards removed to Richmond, Virginia. 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 295 

And when at length the long years of war were drawing 
to a close, underneath the folds of this immortal banner 
sat Washington, while Yorktown surrendered its hosts, 
and our Revolutionary struggle ended with victory. 

It waved thus over that whole historic period of struggle, 
and over the period in which sat that immortal Conven- 
tion that framed our Constitution. It cheered the hardy 
pioneers who then began to go forth and explore the 
Western wilds, in all their desperate strifes with savage 
Indians. It was to them a memorial and symbol of com- 
fort. Our States grew up under it. And when our ships 
began to swarm upon the ocean, to carry forth our com- 
merce, and, inspired by the genial flame of liberty, to carry 
forth our ideas, and Great Britain arrogantly demanded 
the right to intrude her search-warrants upon American 
decks, then up went the lightning flag, and every star 
meant liberty and every stripe streamed defiance. 

The gallant fleet of Lake Erie, — have you forgotten it? 
The thunders that echoed to either shore were over- 
shadowed by this broad ensign of our American liberty. 
Those glorious men that went forth in the old ship Con- 
stitution carried this banner to battle and to victory. The 
old ship is alive yet. The new traitors of the South could 
not burn her; they did not sink her; and she has been 
hauled out of the reach of hostile hands and traitorous 
bands. Bless the name, bless the ship, bless her historic 
memory, and bless the old flag that waves over her yet ! 

The Perrys, the Lawrences, the Biddies, the McDon- 
oughs, the Porters, and a host of others whose names 
cannot die, — do you forget that they fought under this 
national banner, and fought for liberty ? 

How glorious, then, has been its origin! How glorious 
has been its history? How divine is its meaning ! In all 
the world is there another banner that carries such hope, 
such grandeur of spirit, such soul-inspiring truth, as our 
dear old American flag? made by liberty, made for liberty, 
nourished in its spirit, carried in its service, and never, not 
once in all the earth, made to stoop to despotism! Never, 
— did I say ? Alas ! Only to that worst despotism, South- 



296 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ern slavery, has it bowed. Remember, every one of you, 
that the slaveholders of the South, alone of all the world, 
have put their feet upon the American flag ! 

And now this banner has been put on trial ! It has been 
condemned. For what? Has it failed of duty? Has 
liberty lost color by it ? Have moths of oppression eaten 
its folds ? Has it refused to shine on freemen and given 
its light to despots ? No. It has been true, brave, loyal. 
It has become too much a banner of liberty for men who 
mean and plot despotism. Remember, citizen ! remember, 
Christian soldier ! the American flag has been fired upon 
by Americans, and trodden down because it stood in the 
way of slavery ! This is all that you have reaped for your 
long patience, for your many compromises, for your gen- 
erous trust and your Christian forbearance ! You may 
now see through all the South just what kind of patriotism 
slavery breeds ! East of the mountains I suppose you might 
travel through all Washington's State and not see one star 
nor one stripe. Thank God, Washington is dead, and has 
not lived to see the infamy and the disgrace that have fallen 
upon that recreant State ! In all North Carolina I fear 
you shall find not one American flag. In Florida you shall 
not find one. In Georgia, I know not, except in the 
mountain fastnesses, if there be one. With a like excep- 
tion, there is not one in Alabama. Neither is there one in 
repudiating Mississippi, nor in Louisiana, nor in Texas, 
ungrateful, nor in Arkansas. In all this waste and wilder- 
ness of States this banner has gone down, and a miserable 
counterfeit, a poor forgery, has been run up upon the rec- 
reant pole, to stand in the stead of the glorious old Revolu- 
tionary, historic American flag ! And how is it in the great 
middle brood of States ? As a star is obscured for an in- 
stant by a passing cloud, and then shines forth again, so in 
Maryland the flag and its stars were hid for a day, but they 
now flame out once more. Maryland is safe. All honor to 
Delaware; she has never flinched. In Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee and Missouri the banner is at half-mast, uncertain 
whether it will go up or down. And of all these States I 
can say, with all my heart and soul, in the language of the 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 297 

Apocalypse: "I would thou wert cold or hot. So then be- 
cause thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will 
spew thee out of my mouth." God hates lukewarm patriot- 
ism, as much as lukewarm religion; and we hate it too. 
We do not believe in hermaphrodite patriots. We want 
men to be men, from the crown of their head to the sole of 
their foot, and to say No to oppression, and Yes to liberty, 
and to say both as if thunder spoke ! 

But this is not the worst, — that this banner should have 
been lowered by the hands of recreants. It was upon these 
streaming bars and upon these bright stars that every one of 
that immense concentric range of guns was aimed, when 
Sumter was lifted up in the midst, almost like another wit- 
nessing Calvary; and that flag which Russia could not 
daunt, nor France intimidate, nor England conquer, has 
gone down beneath the fire of treacherous States within our 
own Union ! And do you know that when it was fallen, in 
the streets of a Southern city, it was trailed, hooted at, 
pierced with swords ? Men that have sat in the Senate of the 
United States ran out to trample upon it; it was fired on 
and slashed by the mob; it was dragged through the mud; 
it was hissed at and spit upon; and so it was carried 
through Southern cities ! That our flag, which has found 
on the ocean, in the Indian Islands, in Sumatra, in Japan, 
in China, and in all the world, no enemies, either barbarian 
or civilized, that dared to touch it with foul aspersion, — that 
this flag should, in our own nation, and by our own peo- 
ple, be spit upon, and trampled under foot, is more than 
the heart of man can bear ! 

And what is its crime ? If it had forgotten its origin, if 
it had gone over to oppression, if it had set these stars 
like so many blazing jewels in the tiara of imperial despot- 
ism, I should not have wondered at its going down. If it 
had been recreant to its trust of ideas of liberty, I should 
have expected to see it go down. But it has not failed to 
defend liberty. Have there been quartered on its armorial 
bearings any bastard symbols significant of oppression ? 
None. It is guilty of nothing but of too much liberty. 
Its stars have too much promise in them for those that are 



298 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

born slaves; and its stripes stream too bright a light to 
those that sit in darkness. That is the crime of our national 
banner. 

And now God speaks by the voice of his providence, 
saying, " Lift again that banner ! Advance it full and 
high ! " To your hand, and to yours, God and your 
country commit that imperishable trust. You go forth 
self-called, or rather called by the trust of your countrymen 
and by the Spirit of your God, to take that trailing banner 
out of the dust and out of the mire, and lift it again where 
God's rains can cleanse it, and where God's free air can 
cause it to unfold and stream as it has always floated be- 
fore the wind. God bless the men that go forth to save 
from disgrace the American flag ! 

Accept it, then, in all its fullness of meaning. It is not a 
painted rag. It is a whole national history. It is the Con- 
stitution. It is the government. It is the free people that 
stand in the government on the Constitution. Forget not 
what it means; and for the sake of its ideas, rather than 
its mere emblazonry, be true to your country's flag. By 
your hands lift it; but let your lifting it be no holiday dis- 
play. It must be advanced ^''because of the truths 

That flag must go to the capital of this nation; and it 
must go not hidden, not secreted, not in a case or covering, 
but streaming abroad, displayed, bright as the sun, clear 
as the moon, terrible as an army with banners ! For a 
single week that disgraceful crook,* that shameful circuit, 
may be needful; but the way from New England, the way 
from New York, the way from New Jersey and Pennsyl- 
vania to Washington, lies right through Baltimore ; and that 
is the way the flag must and shall go ! \^Enthusiastic cheers^ 
But that flag, borne by ten thousand and thrice ten thou- 
sand hands, from Connecticut, from Massachusetts (God 
bless the State and all her men !), from shipbuilding Maine, 
from old Granite New Hampshire, from the Vermont of 
Bennington and Green-Mountain-Boy patriotism, from 
Rhode Island, not behind any in zeal and patriotism, from 



* The route through Baltimore was closed, and for weeks Washington 
was reached through Annapolis. 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 299 

New York, from Ohio, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey 
and Delaware, and the other loyal States, — that flag must 
be carried, bearing every one of its insignia, to the sound 
of the drum and the fife, into our national capital, until 
"Washington shall seem to be a forest, in which every tree 
supports the American banner ! 

And it must not stop there. The country does not be- 
long to us from the Lakes only to Washington, but from 
the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The flag must go on. 
The land of Washington shall see Washington's flag again. 
The land that sits in darkness, and in which the people see 
no light, shall yet see light dawn, and liberty flash from the 
old American banner ! It must see Charleston again, and 
float again over every fort in Charleston harbor. It must 
go further, to the Alligator State, and stand there again. 
And sweeping up through all plantations, and over all 
fields of sugar and rice and tobacco, and every other thing, 
it must be found in every State till you touch the Missis- 
sippi. And, bathing in those waters, it must go across and 
fill Texas with its sacred light. Nor must it stop when it 
floats over every one of the States. That flag must stand, 
bearing its whole historic spirit and original meaning, in 
every Territory of this nation ! 

Have you not had enough mischief of slavery ? Do you 
not see what men it breeds ? It hatches cockatrice's eggs. 
Slavery breeds traitors in the masters and miserable slaves 
in the subjects. Slavery is the abominable poison that has 
circulated in the body politic, and corrupted this whole 
nation almost past healing. Blessed be God there is a 
medicine found! 

Now, having had experience, and having seen what 
slavery does to the slave (and what it does to the slave is 
the least part of the evil. The slave is to be envied in the 
comparison. I would to God that the white man were 
half as little hurt by slavery); seeing how it blights the 
heart's core; how it corrupts the most sacred sentiments; 
how it brings down natures born for better things to the 
degradation of despotism, — having seen these things,can 
you, — I ask every man that has conscience, or reason, or 



300 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

hope, or fear, or love in his soul, — can you meet God Al- 
mighty's judgment, or the inquiring eye of God, if while 
you live you permit that evil to roll unchecked three thou- 
sand miles to the Pacific Ocean ? Let, then, this banner go 
again into every recreant State, and float over every inch of 
territory, saying, "Defiance to slavery; all hail to liberty!" 
Nor is it enough that our flag shall stand and merely 
reassert its authority. It is time now that that banner 
shall do as much for each man in our own country as it 
will in every other land on the globe. If I go to Con- 
stantinople, and a mob threatens me, that banner shines 
like lightning out of heaven, and I am safe. If I go to 
Jerusalem, or among the Bedouin Arabs, I have but to show 
that symbol, and I am safe. If I go to Africa, and skirt its 
coasts among the natives, and exhibit the colors of my coun- 
try, I am safe. I can go around the globe under the protec- 
tion of this flag. But it is denied me to go to Washington. 
I cannot go from my door to the capital of this nation, be- 
cause the American flag djes not defend Americans on their 
own soil. I cannot go to Virginia nor North Carolina, nor 
South Carolina, nor Florida, nor Georgia, nor Alabama, 
nor Mississippi, nor Louisiana, nor Texas, nor Arkansas, 
nor to most of Kentucky and of Tennessee. We have not 
had a government for fifty years that dared to do a thing 
that slavery did not wish to have done. I suppose that 
within the last twenty years uncounted multitudes of men 
have been mulcted in property, mobbed, hung, murdered, 
for whose wrongs and blood no government has ever made 
any inquisition. It is permitted, to this hour, to one man 
to maltreat, to murder, to rob, to strip, to destroy another 
man, in Nashville, in Memphis, in New Orleans, in Mobile, 
in Charleston, and even in Richmond, close up under the 
eye of government. There has never been an hour for the 
last twenty-five years when government would lift a voice 
or stretch out a hand to protect Northern men against the 
outrages committed upon them by men at the South. 
Now I demand that, when the American flag is next un- 
furled in South Carolina, it shall protect me there, as it pro- 
tects a South Carolinian in New York. I demand that it 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 30 1 

shall protect me in Mobile, as it protects a Mobilian here. 
I demand that this shall be a common country, and that 
all men shall enjoy the imperishable rights which the Con- 
stitution guarantees to every American citizen. I demand 
that there shall be such a victory of this flag as shall make 
the whole and undivided land the common possession of 
all and every one of its citizens ! 

If any man asks me whether I will consent to a com- 
promise, I reply. Yes. I love compromises; they are dear 
to me — if I may make them. Give me a compromise that 
shall bring peace. Let me say, *' Hang the ringleading 
traitors; suppress their armies; give peace to their fields; 
lift up the banner, and make a highway in which every 
true American citizen, minding his own business, can walk 
unmolested; free the Territories, and keep them free," — 
that is our compromise. Give to us the doctrine of the 
fathers, renew the Declaration of Independence, refill the 
Constitution with the original blood of liberty, destroy 
traitors and treason, make the doctrine of secession a by- 
word and a hissing; make laws equal; let that justice for 
which they were ordained be the same in Maine or Caro- 
lina, to the rich and to the poor, the bond and the free, — 
and thus we will compromise. 

But as long as compromise means yokes on us and 
license to them, silence for liberty and open-mouthed free- 
dom to despotism, so long compromise is a Devil's juggle; 
no man that is a freeman and a Christian should be caught 
in any such snare as that. I ask for nothing except that 
which the fathers meant. I ask for the fulfillment of Wash- 
ington's prayer. I ask for the carrying out of the designs 
of those sacred men that sat in conclave at Independence 
Hall in Philadelphia, and framed our immortal Constitu- 
tion. I ask for liberty in New York, in Carolina, in Ala- 
bama, in every State and in every Territory. I ask for it 
throughout the whole land. I ask no Northern advantage. 
It is a mere geographical accident that liberty is in the 
North. It is not because it is the North, but because 
the North is free, that I ask for the ascendency of North- 
ern principles. 



302 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

_^ Ah ! that Daniel Webster had lived to see what we do, — 

Mr' .J /- I ^^^'' strong man whose faith failed him in a fatal hour of 

'' \ ambition ! I will read from a speech of his better days one 

of the noblest passages that ever issued from the uninspired 

pen of man. It is appropriate for this hour: — 

" When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, 
the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and 
dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dis- 
severed, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or 
drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and 
lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Repub- 
lic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high 
advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, 
not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, — bear- 
ing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as What is all 
this worth? nor those other words of delusion and ioWy, Liberty 
first, and Union afterwards, — but everywhere, spread all over in 
characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they 
float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the 
whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American 
heart, — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and insepara- 
ble ! " 

God grant it ! God grant it ! 

You live in a civilized age. You go on a sacred mission. 
The prayers and sympathies of Christendom are with you. 
You go to open again the shut-up fountains of liberty, and 
to restore this disgraced banner to its honor. You go to 
serve your country in the cause of liberty; and if God 
brings you into conflict ere long with thqse misguided men 
of the South, when you see their miserable, new-vamped 
banner, remember what that flag means, — Treason, Slavery, 
Despotism; then look up and see the bright stars and the 
glorious stripes over your own head, and read in them 
Liberty, Liberty, Liberty ! 

And if you fall in that struggle, may some kind hand 
wrap around about you the flag of your country, and may 
you die with its sacred touch upon you. It shall be sweet 
to go to rest lying in the folds of your country's banner, 
meaning, as it shall mean, " Liberty and Union, now and 
forever." 




^^^^m^ ^^^^^^ 



THE NATIONAL FLAG. 303 

We will not forget you. You go forth from us not to be 
easily and lightly passed over. The waves shall not close 
over the places which you have held; but when you return, 
— not as you go, many of you inexperienced, and many of 
you unknown, — you shall return from the conquests of 
liberty with a reputation and a character established for- 
ever to your children and your children's children. It 
shall be an honor, it shall be a legend, it shall be a historic 
truth; and your posterity shall say: "Our fathers stood 
up in the day of peril, and laid again the foundations of 
liberty that were shaken; and in their hands the banner of 
our country streamed forth like the morning star upon the 
night." 

God bless you ! 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES/ 



" For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver 
thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee ; therefore shall thy camp 
be holy; that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee." 
— Deut. xxiii. 14. 

That Christian people should learn to dread the camp 
is not strange. The evils which have gone along with 
armies, the dangers of moral infection in military camps, 
are not imaginary, and are perhaps not less than our 
greatest fears would lead us to believe them to be. And 
yet it ought not to be forgotten that these evils are vinci- 
ble, and that, though real, they may be overcome. There 
are no circumstances where Christian courage may not 
gain a victory over the sharpest temptations. It should 
not be forgotten that the world is indebted to camp life 
for institutions which have done more to infuse order and 
civilization among men than any legislation. God's peo- 
ple lived in military camps for full half a century. In 
camps Moses promulgated the Hebrew code. In the camp 
they began to practice the matchless elements of the He- 
brew Commonwealth. In the camp the slavish habits 
which they had contracted were gradually worn off, their 
idolatrous tendencies were at last repressed, and their na- 
tional education began. Perhaps the purest, most orderly 
and well-regulated period of the Hebrew history was that 
of their early camp life. More brilliant periods there were, 
under David and Solomon; but I doubt if ever there was. 
on the whole, a more moral period. Nor will a study of 
the rules and regulations of that life be unprofitable even 
now. For while Moses has nothing to teach us in strictly 
military matters, he has anticipated almost every effort of 

* Preached in May, i86t. 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 305 

science for health, cleanliness, order, and good civic 
economy, striving, with imperfect means, to be sure, to do 
that which, with more perfect instrumentalities, science is 
now accomplishing. 

Our text shows the influences upon which this effort was 
based. Religion was brought to bear, with its appropriate 
influences, upon camp life. 

There can be no doubt that camp morals, subsequently 
to this epoch, and in other nations, have deserved all the 
ill repute which they have acquired. Nor can we suppose 
camp life ever, under the most favorable circumstances, to 
be as conducive to virtue as is the family state in civic 
communities. 

But we must not look upon it as always and necessarily 
so great an evil as it was in the past ages of European 
military history. Camps do not need to continue to be 
what they have hitherto been. For the world has ad- 
vanced. Every method of living has advanced. We know 
better what to do, we know how to do better, and we 
are doing better, in every element of life, than did ages 
past. The morals of the common people, and of soldiers, 
who spring from them, are eminently better than they 
used to be. The circumstances under which w^ar is con- 
ducted are much changed, and changed much for the bet- 
ter. Experience, and the facilities for organizing and 
supplying armies, have removed many of the temptations 
to evil. At least, they have made it unnecessary for men 
to be wicked. 

It has been the policy of this nation to discourage stand- 
ing armies. It is a wise policy, and it never appeared so 
wise as now. Standing armies are always dangerous; and 
I can hardly doubt that, had there been a hundred thou- 
sand soldiers subject to the control of those wicked men 
just ejected from this government, our liberties would have 
been in peril. They would have been suppressed, to be 
acquired again only by crossing a Red Sea of blood. We 
owe much of our salvation to the fact that there was not a 
military power in the hands of an Administration imbecile 
in all but corruption. Everything else had been got ready 



3o6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to overthrow the government but this infernal enginery of 
a standing army. 

Tlie theory of our people has been, that, as the common 
people framed their government, administer their govern- 
ment, and are the sources of power and of political influ- 
ence in that government, so and in like manner the com- 
mon people shall be their own soldiers, and do their own 
fighting, when it is necessary. War will not be unneces- 
sarily provoked when the men that provoke the war are 
obliged themselves to wage it. 

But with great wisdom two provisions have been made. 
First, the common people have been enrolled as a militia, 
and made to have some little idea of combination and drill. 
It has not been much, it has been just enough to subject 
them to the ridicule of professional blatterers; nevertheless, 
it has been sufficient. And whenever the common people 
of this land have been called upon for the defense of 
things that were worth fighting for, they have brought the 
conflict to a successful issue. 

Next, public military academies have given the most 
rigid and thorough education to men selected from every 
State. And thus we have an intelligent and hardy com- 
mon people, somewhat acquainted with the rudiments of 
army formations, and of the duties of soldiers, for a foun- 
dation; and for leaders, men of scientific military educa- 
tion. 

And now, when war breaks out with us, the camp is both 
better and worse than European camps and camps of other 
countries. It is better, or may be, because it is made up, 
not of professional soldiers without civil sympathies, cut 
off from pursuits of ordinary life, but of citizens, pervaded 
with the sympathies of citizens; of men who go to war as 
one of life's duties, alternative duties, and not as their vo- 
cation. And such men ought to make better soldiers 
than others, more moral and more manly. 

It is worse, because in regular armies, and among sol- 
diers trained for years, there is an education toward neat- 
ness and order and economy of living which a body of 
volunteers suddenly gathered together are not likely to 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 307 

have. In the Mexican war, if I remember correctly, the 
deaths by sickness in the volunteer regiments were more 
than one hundred per cent, greater than in the regular 
army; showing the difference beween practiced skill in 
living and the inexperience of the volunteers. 

Such, with its faults, and with possible excellences, is the 
American military system. It is not our business now so 
much to subject it to criticism, as to accept it with its duties 
and responsibilities. For, in the providence of God, war is 
upon us. It is quite immaterial whether we wish it or not, 
whether we think it might have been avoided, or whether 
every step on either side has been the wisest. The past is 
past. Let the dead bury their dead. War, I repeat, is 
upon us. The army is collecting. Vario-us camps are 
forming. The question for the whole Christian community 
is this: What is the duty of this country toward its camps ? 

It is not enough, then, that we should simply encourage 
men to volunteer in their country's cause, clothe them, 
equip them, get them off, and then consider them as no 
longer on our hands. It is a part of our duty to equip 
them, and see that they are well fitted out, and to send 
them off under good auspices; but we must also consider 
ourselves responsible for the continued well-being of that 
army which we send forth to do, not their work, but our 
work. It is not enough for us to do some things. That 
great army that is gathering around the government of this 
nation, to maintain its sacred laws and principles, must be 
adopted by all Christian men at home, and must be pro- 
vided for, not simply in clothes and food, but in education 
and in morals. We must see to it that physically they are 
well equipped, and we must see to it that that moral care 
which comes from material sources (and there is a good 
deal of it) is provided; but when we have provisioned and 
clothed and equipped the men, and put them beyond the 
reach of physical want, we have but just begun to dis- 
charge our duties toward them. 

The army must feel that it is not a thing separated from 
society, and different from it. It is only the arm of society 
stretched out, not cut off, but joined to the body, receiving 



3o8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

circulation from it yet, and in vital sympathy with it. 
That we may better understand our duties, I will point out 
some of the dangers to which our men are liable, and some 
of the measures by which these dangers may be averted. 

1. As armies are formed, it must necessarily be the case 
that they shall come together in an ill-assorted and socially 
unfit manner. But a young man ought to learn how to live 
with men differing in every respect from himself. A young 
man must learn to live with men; with men mixed and 
various, good and bad, of all dispositions and habits; and 
surely, if a man does not learn it in the army, it is because 
he is not apt to learn. One can scarcely conceive of men 
brought together with less principle of assortment than in 
volunteer regiments. Many are ruined in learning this les- 
son; and many are ruined that need not have been, had 
some one taught them, warned them, and encouraged them 
to maintain their own individuality. Old and young are 
huddled together Some of strong will and others of an 
impressible disposition are brought in contact with each 
other, and you know which will receive the dent. The 
hard and the soft are side by side. Among them are the 
proud man, that receives no impressions from others, and 
the approbative man, that stands on his own root by a 
slender stem, and nods and bobs in the wind like a rush 
or daisy. It is a good school, if it did not spoil so many 
for the sake of making a few. But so it is. The army is 
so formed that the first lesson, and the first danger, is that 
of living with men who are entirely unlike themselves. 

2. There is a sudden change of all the habits of life. 
Men become their own cooks, their own chambermaids, 
their own seamstresses, and their own washerwomen. 
Tables, linen, china cups, and delf plates disappear. Men 
go down to camp life to become almost savage in the sim- 
plicity of domestic economies. No beds receive them such 
as they have been accustomed to. No such relations of 
table and social intercourse as they have previously enjoyed 
are enjoyed by them now. They seem to have been 
stripped bare of the refinements of civilized society. All 
influences calculated to promote the exterior and physical 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 309 

proprieties of life seem to be removed from them. These 
things are apt to beget great carelessness and rudeness, and 
even a positive barbarism, unless they are resisted and 
counteracted. 

It seems as though there were very little religious influ- 
ence in a clean face, a clean skin, and a comely garb; but 
there is a good deal of simple moral influence in these 
things. When a man does not care for the neatness of his 
person, nor for the ordinary proprieties and economies of 
life, he is verging toward the barbarous state. It is so even 
with men of moral stamina and settled characters; but how 
much more, if character is unfashioned and habits un- 
formed ! 

3. The restraints, the affections, the softening influences 
of the household, are taken away from the soldier in the 
camp. No man can imagine the difference which this 
makes till he has seen it and felt it. Men that at home are 
not only moral and decorous, but who are without tempta- 
tion or desire to be anything else, when away from home 
do things so utterly out of character that they seem not to be 
the same persons. There is, it may be said, a sort of mania 
or insanity that falls on men away from home. Men that 
at home not only do not drink, but do not want to, when 
they go away from home and the restraints of the family 
to reside for weeks, do drink and become intoxicated. Men 
that at home are never subject to vagrant thoughts, almost 
lose the power of regulated thought away from home. No 
one imagines how much he is upheld by the moral influ- 
ences of those about him, and how little by his own 
will and character, till he goes abroad alone. When a man 
goes to England, he says, " There is not a man in this 
whole kingdom who will know what I do," and he has a 
morbid curiosity to know how he will feel under such and 
such circumstances, and he does things that he never did 
before, to satisfy that curiosity. A man in Paris who 
knows there is not another man in Paris that knows him, is 
not the same man that he was in New York. That is to 
say, he is subject to temptations and influences that he 
never would have been subject to at home. When men 



3IO PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

that are patterns of morality in the village come to New 
York in spring and fall, to do business, they are not always 
patterns of morality. They seem to slough moral habits 
for the time being. Those that deal with them know it. 
It would not do for them to treat this or that man at home 
as they treated him the last time they were in New York. 
It would produce an uproar in the church, or an explosion 
in the family ! It is not because they are hypocrites that 
they deport themselves in one way at home and in another 
way abroad; it is not because they are insincere; it is be- 
cause men are stronger at home surrounded with friends, 
responsible to a public sentiment, sustained by example 
and social sympathies, than when they are left standing 
alone. It is so good to the soul and to the morals to be 
surrounded by those who bear sweet affinities and relation- 
ships, that when a man has them he is well, and when he 
has not he is sick or feeble. It is not surprising that young 
men should feel as older men have felt, since the world 
began, when removed from social restraints and domestic 
influences. 

To this must be added the almost necessary rudeness of 
a womanless state. If God were to take the sun and moon 
and stars out of the heavens, the chances for husbandry 
would be what, if God were to take woman out of life, 
would be the chances for refinement and civilization. 
Woman carries civilization in her heart. It springs from 
her. Her power and influence mark the civilization of any 
country. A man that lives in a community where he has 
the privileges of woman's society, and is subject to woman's 
influence, is almost of necessity refined, more than he is aware 
of; and when men are removed from the genial influence 
of virtuous womanhood, the very best degenerate, or feel 
the deprivation. 

There is something wanting in the air when you get 
west of the Alleghany Mountains on a sultry day of sum- 
mer. The air east of the mountains is supplied with a 
sort of pabulum from the salt water of the ocean, by which 
one is sustained in the sultriest days of midsummer. Now 
what this salt is to the air, that is woman's influence to the 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 311 

virtue of a community. You breathe it without knowing 
it. All you know is that you are made stronger and bet- 
ter. And a man is not half a man unless a woman helps 
him to be ! 

One of the mischiefs of camp life is that women are re- 
moved from it. The men may not know what it is that 
lets them down to a lower state of feeling, or what that 
subtle influence was that kept them up to a higher state of 
refinement, but it is the absence of woman in the one case, 
as it was the presence of woman in the other. Woman is 
a light which God has set before man to show him which 
way to go, and blessed is he who has sense enough to fol- 
low it ! 

4. To this must be added the evils which are liable to 
spring out of the interplay and alternation of idleness and 
excessive exertion in camp life. Men whose habits are reg- 
ular are half saved to begin with. A man who has an 
order of business which brings something to be done 
every hour, which fills every hour with occupation, is a 
match for the Devil. Satan finds plenty of mischief for 
idle hands to do, and very little for busy hands. But men 
whose calling is spasmodic, who use up their strength in a 
few hours, and then fall back upon indolence and self- 
indulgence, are peculiarly in danger. You shall find that 
those workmen who are excessively taxed, — glass-blowers, 
foundrymen, the boat hands on our Western rivers, ex- 
pressmen, and the like, — who have, during one or two 
hours, to do work enough for eight or ten men to each man, 
and who are obliged to concentrate the whole energy of 
their life and power for this brief period, and then fall back 
upon five or six indolent hours, are the men that are most 
in danger, and that are most apt to be reckless, wild, dar- 
ing, and physically self-indulgent. Experience will show 
that while regular and successive industries, which furnish 
employment for every hour, conduce to morals, excessive 
labor for a few hours, followed by long intervals of indo- 
lence, is demoralizing. No man can go through the ex- 
perience of such labor and alternate indolence and come 
out sound and well. 



312 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Now this is peculiarly the experience of the camp. The 
drill goes for nothing: that is mere play. But with camp 
life comes the long march to-day, and the lying still for 
three or four days; the desperate conflict, with all its ex- 
citement for a few hours, and the rest for the ensuing 
week; long periods of inactivity, interspersed with occa- 
sional intensifications of activity. These things shake the 
habits of the whole moral fabric of a man. Morbid ap- 
petites spring up from such irregularities. The body 
ceases to perform its normal functions, the tendencies of 
life are different, and the whole character is changed. 

5. We must remember that the aim and end of war is 
physical violence. Now men cannot be associated with 
objects of violence and not receive collateral moral im- 
pressions from them. If men are educated, and if they 
bear with them a stern will, and look upon war as a terri- 
ble but necessary evil, they may go through it and escape 
unharmed. Such a man as Anderson can go through the 
most dreadful experiences of war and come out a Chris- 
tian, a humane, a gentle man. Where a man brings a 
heart and a faith into experiences like these he may avoid 
harm, as they did who went through the fire without even 
the smell of fire upon their garments; but raw, unenlight- 
ened, untrained natures cannot but be hardened and de- 
praved by them. A man, however, cannot tell what effect 
they will have upon him till he is brought into the midst 
of them. Some are cured of cruelty by the sight of blood. 
They revolt from it with the whole force of their being. 
Some have a natural tendency to it; and when they come 
into the exercise of it they speedily sink into degeneracy, 
and drag others down with them. At any rate, this living 
for an end of violence must affect the whole moral nature. 
A life supremely devoted to resistance, to contention, to 
destruction, must be full of dangers. 

6. We must consider the peculiar danger of camps in 
producing intemperance. So great is this danger that we 
might almost compromise, and say, " Give us release from 
that, and we will run the risk of every other one." The 
desire of excitement, for various reasons, is nowhere else, 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 313 

perhaps, so great as in the camp. Where, for instance, 
men are to prepare themselves for hard and successive 
work, it is not unnatural that they should seek to rouse up 
their energies with strong drink. And where men have 
gone through severe and long continued labor, where they 
have been deprived of their appropriate food, where they 
have been exposed to extremes of heat or cold, where they 
have been taxed with a harassing watch or a desper- 
ate fight, where all their habits have been irregular, then 
nothing is more natural than that they should seek to re- 
pair their wasted strength by intoxicating drinks. But the 
indulgence in the use of ardent spirits for such purposes is 
a fatal indulgence. I think the distinction between the 
right and wrong use of alcoholic stimulants lies simply in 
this: The man that uses them for producing digestion, or 
so as to promote prompt and efiicient action of the natural 
functions of the system, is using them medicinally; but 
the man that uses them either for the purpose of unnatu- 
rally exciting the physical energies, or for the purpose of 
repairing the waste of those energies by excessive exertion, 
is using them fatally. If you use them for the sake of fit- 
ting yourself to make a brilliant speech, you use them 
fatally. If you use them in order that you may supply the 
strength you want for an emergency, you use them fatally. 
And if you use them for the purpose of making up for the. 
strength that you have lost in any severe undertaking, 
you use them fatally. If you use them either to create 
power, or to compensate for the exhaustion of power, of 
mind or body, you violate the laws of nature, and so use 
them fatally. When Paul said to Timothy, " Use a little 
wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities," 
he doubtless referred to the fact that Timothy had the 
dyspepsia, and that a little wine might help his digestion, 
and that it was through good digestion that he was to have 
good blood, good nerves, and good, muscles ! But if a 
man keeps a fiery stream of stimulus pouring upon his 
brain for the purpose of increasing its activity, he is a 
marked man, and his name is already written down in the 
book of death. When men are severely taxed, there is 



314 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

nothing more natural than that they should clutch at any- 
thing that will afford them momentary relief. And any 
indulgence in this practice is apt to be fatal, because when 
spirituous liquors have been taken for one thing, they will 
naturally be taken for others. 

The dullness, the weariness, the cnimi of camp life is 
greatly alleviated by the social festive glass. 

The pernicious influence of example in the matter of 
drinking will also be felt in the camp. The young man who 
is not wont to drink may be led to do it because he has 
not the moral courage to resist the temptation under which 
he is brought. A young man in the ranks naturally wants 
to stand well with the officers, a young officer naturally 
wants to stand well with his superior officers, one that is 
weak naturally wants to stand well with those that are 
stronger than himself, and there is danger that many 
will fall into the habit of drinking for the sake of gaining 
favor. A man that is superior in any respect to his fellows 
has great power of persuasion over them, and can, if he be 
intemperate, do much toward drawing them into intem- 
perance. 

Could intoxicating drinks be kept away from camps, one- 
half of their dangers would be obviated. And for anyone 
that is going forth to meet the temptations of camp life, I had 
almost said I would sum up in one simple word of re- 
membrance a talisman of safety, — Temperance, absolute 
temperance. There are other dangers of the camp, but 
there are so many connected with this that we almost for- 
get the rest, and say that you will be safe if you are strictly 
temperate. 

Why, I think war kills more after it is over than during 
its continuance. It is not the man who comes home limp- 
ing on one usable leg that is most damaged: it is the man 
that comes home with two legs and two arms, and with no 
use for them. It is not the man who comes home pierced 
through so as to be all his life an invalid, that war most 
damages; it is the man that, pierced through with the 
liquid shot, comes reeling and staggering home to be worse 
than useless. And I say to every one that has anything 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 315 

to do with the camp, for the love of God, for the love of 
man, for the sake of patriotism, and for the salvation of 
those that are imperiled, take care of the young men, that 
they do not become drunkards ! 

7. There is an evil to be dreaded from the contagion of 
bad men in camp life. I am not referring to gross and 
shamelessly bad men. When a man becomes shamelessly 
bad, he becomes comparatively harmless. It is not the 
thing with poison scattered all over the outside that 
endangers anybody; it is the cake that is poison, but is 
sweetened and not seen to be poison; it is the liquor that 
is poisoned at the bottom, and is not suspected of being 
poisoned. I do not know, so far as my personal inspection 
is concerned, but certain companies that have been raised 
in New York are saints prepared for glory, but the papers 
do represent them as being made up of quite another class 
of men, and that they will leave New York wonderfully 
purified when they go forth to do a patriot's duty in a 
distant State ! But if there should be found in the volun- 
teer force a burglar, a thief, a scoundrel, a culprit, he is not 
the man to be very dangerous to young men. Do you 
suppose a virtuous young man is going to learn pocket- 
picking in the camp ? Do you suppose a young man is go- 
ing to learn stealing there ? These things do not come by 
contagion. They are the final results of insidious causes. 
They are the desperate ends of fair beginnings. They are 
the holes through which men go out of our sight into perdi- 
tion. It is not the endings, but the beginnings, that are to 
be guarded against. 

The men that are dangerous in camps are not bloated 
drunkards, shameless gamblers, and such as they. But an 
accomplished officer, a brilliant fellow, who knows the 
world, who is gentle in language, who understands all the 
etiquettes of society, who is fearless of God, who believes 
nothing in religion, who does not hesitate with wit and 
humor to jeer at sacred things, who takes an infernal pleas- 
ure in winding around his finger the young about him, 
who is polished and wicked, and walks as an angel of light 
to tempt his fellow-men, as Satan did to tempt our first 



3l6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

parents, — if there be in the camp such a one, he is the dan- 
gerous man ! And the camp is full of such ones. The 
worst of it is that the young do not suspect them till it is 
too late to avoid them. There is a sort of dynamic influ- 
ence that superior natures exert upon inferior ones. It is 
said that a cat can fascinate a bird, and that a snake fas- 
cinates its own victims. There is no doubt that one hu- 
man being can fascinate another. There is no doubt that 
one man built in a certain way has almost complete ascend- 
ency over another man built in a different way. This fact 
is fearfully illustrated in the camp by the contamination 
of the young and inexperienced under the influence of bad 
men with whom they come in contact. 

I shall not mention the petty vices of lawlessness that 
grow up in war. When men are assaulting an enemy and 
overrunning an enemy's territory, when a town having re- 
sisted them, they have by the strength of their right hand 
broken through all obstacles and taken possession of it, 
they are not apt to be too respectful of the rights of those 
that are at their mercy. Rapine and thefts and various 
violence grow up under such circumstances. 

I shall mention but one other danger, and that only in- 
directly has a moral bearing upon this subject, — I mean 
the danger of neglecting to observe the laws of health. 
I have been very much affected in seeing how men that are 
gathered into our regiments live. You and I that live in 
ceiled houses, and have changes of apparel for all the seasons, 
— spring, summer, autumn, and winter, — and many of them 
for each season, can scarcely form a conception of the pov- 
erty and destitution of many laboring men, but particu- 
larly foreigners, who enlist in the army. When their shoes 
give out, they have to make a special campaign to get an- 
other pair. When their hat gives out, they wear it still. 
When their coat gives out, they get another if they can. 
How little these men know of the laws of health ! How 
little they know of the economies of life ! Now hurry a 
thousand, or ten thousand of these men, by land and water 
away from home, oblige them to be irregular in their 
habits, give them poor food miserably cooked, let them 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 317 

after a long, fagging day's journey go to camp so tired 
that they can hardly see, and throw themselves down under 
the first bush or tree, no matter whether the ground is wet 
or dry, so that when they wake up they feel as though a 
ramrod had been run through their arms and their legs, — 
and is it to be wondered at that multitudes of them sicken 
and die ? The hospitals that receive the sick from armies 
are a commentary on the knowledge that prevails among 
men respecting the laws of health. In ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred the sickness of camp life is owing to 
the fact that men do not know how to take care of them- 
selves. Were I a chaplain in the army, while I would 
preach and distribute books and tracts, and do special 
ministerial work, I would, in the main, see to it that the 
health of the soldiers w^as not neglected. I would explain 
to them health-laws, and urge them to observe them, and 
watch over them as tenderly as a mother watches over her 
child. And to any man that is going as chaplain I would 
say, Take care of your men's health. For although health 
is not religion, religion is very much dependent on health. 
A candle is not a candlestick, but a candle without a candle- 
stick is of little account. If a man is going to keep his 
soul alight, he must have a good body to hold it in. And 
one important duty of the sanctuary is to teach the igno- 
rant and unknowing of these matters which are so vital to 
their prosperity. 

Thus much on that side. Allow me a few words now to 
those who go. 

There are going out in all our companies not a few who, 
thank God, have been religiously trained, and are them- 
selves professors of religion, and yet more who, though 
they may not be professors of religion, are really moral and 
virtuous men. I exhort all such that they should see 
eye to eye; that they should find each other out; that they 
should band together for the right. Where two men come 
together on the ground of moral principle, there is a 
church. Where two men associate themselves together for 
the purpose of promoting a moral cause, there is a church. 
An ocean is nothing but an aggregate of drops; and every 



3l8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

drop is a factor of that ocean. And large churches are 
nothing but collections of multitudinous drops. But 
where there are two men united in a Christian work there 
is a church; and there ought to be in every regiment and 
company and platoon* a little church. If in any regiment 
or company or platoon there are two men that are moral 
and good, they ought to stand out at once and take ground 
for goodness and morality. It is a shame to see how fear- 
lessly bad men take ground for iniquity, and how shy good 
men are of avowing religion. There ought to be a bold 
stand taken in favor of virtue by the good in each one of 
the various companies. If there is not such a stand taken 
in Company C of the Fourteenth Regiment, I shall be 
ashamed of my preaching. We have sent out fifteen or 
twenty young men that are distributed through the com- 
panies of another regiment; but we have sent more in this 
particular regiment, because they have remained later upon 
our hands. And I expect that there will be a real moral in- 
fluence exerted through the regiment by the young men 
that are in it who have gone out of this church. 

There ought to be in the camp a provision made to sup- 
ply the wants of the men in the intervals of drill and con- 
flict. I have spoken of the temptations of indolence. We 
shall be utterly delinquent in duty if we make no provision 
of reading for them. They have nothing to do; their 
camp-fire is burning; the sun has just sunk below the 
horizon; they sit in groups here and there; the story-teller 
is in vogue; the man who has the most fluent tongue, and 
who is the most amusing, is the man that is popular, — not 
the man that retires to his tent, or at a little distance, to 
commune with God; but the entertaining man, the man 
that knows how to lessen the tedium of the hour. This 
gives ascendency to dangerous men. But if every day 
there was something to read, this evil would be in a great 
measure overcome. A daily newspaper has become almost 
as necessary to us at home as our daily food ! The want 
will be felt in camp. We cannot eat our breakfast without 
a morning paper; nor our supper without an evening 
paper; and I should not be surprised if before long 



THE CAMP, ITS DAXGERS AND DUTIES. 319 

we should think we could not get our dinner without 
a noon paper. Of course Bibles and Testaments will go 
with the men, but there ought to be other reading for them. 
We have at least two Tract Societies; and it seems to me 
that, while they send some tracts, and a few books, they 
could not put the greater proportion of their funds to so 
good a use as that of subscribing for good sound papers, 
to be read by the soldiers during leisure hours, or while 
sitting in the doors of their tents. There is a moral influ- 
ence in such reading. Not only does it occupy their leisure 
hours, but it takes them out of the dangers of camp life, 
and carries them back to their homes, and leads them to 
think of father and mother, and sisters and brothers, and 
childhood. It abolishes distance. It annihilates separa- 
tion. It quickens their memory and awakens their imagi- 
nation. It prevents them from losing their identity. See 
that the men have books and papers enough. And if the 
great publishing houses feel as if it is not in their line to 
give secular reading-matter, there ought to be organiza- 
tions formed by which the camp shall be filled with news- 
papers. The most efficacious secular book that ever was 
published in America is the newspaper ! 

In other ways there should be kept alive sympathy be- 
tween the camp and the community; between the camp 
and home. Ah ! the chaplain may go round and talk 
to the men as much as he pleases, but I tell you, the 
things that work most powerfully on them are the thoughts 
of home and friends that pass through their minds when 
they sit with their elbows on their knees, and with 
their eyes shut, and say to themselves, " My mother is 
singing," or, " My father is praying." Those golden 
threads that go forth out of the much-weaving mother's 
heart; those threads of love and domesticity that never 
break by long stretching, that go around and around the 
globe itself and yet keep fast hold, — these, after all, are the 
things that work most powerfully on men ! 

Now, let them be supplied with tokens, mementos, re- 
membrancers, from those that are left behind. When the 
soldier looks upon the little things that have been sent him 



320 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

by dear ones at home, he cannot suppress his tears. But 
do you suppose it is because he has a few luxuries? It is 
not the things themselves that he cares for. As likely as 
not he gives these away to his comrades. But loving hearts 
were prompted to send them to him, and kind hands 
placed them in the box ! They are evidences of affection- 
ate regard cherished for him. All these things work 
wonders in the camp. 

Let us take care of those that go out from among us. It 
would be a shame if this Christian community, having sent 
forth young men to fight the battles of the country, should 
forget them. You have but just begun your duty toward 
them. The most serious part of that duty is to take care 
of the camp ! 

My Christian friends, I have the utmost confidence, I 
need not tell you, in the American principle of self-gov- 
ernment. Anything on God's earth can be done by an in- 
telligent, virtuous, self-governing people; and though 
monarchies cannot have camps without mischief, the 
American people can civilize and Christianize the camp. 
I roll the responsibility of doing this upon our churches, 
and assume my part of the responsibility. It will be a shame 
to our civilization and Christianity if we are not able to 
take these camps in the arms of a sanctifying faith, and 
lift them above those corrupting tendencies which are in- 
separable from war. I hope to see those who go from this 
church come back, not only as good as they go, but better, 
more manly, more fearless for the right. I do not expect 
that there will be any castaways among them. I do not 
believe that one of them will be a deserter from the faith. 
I feel assured that they will all be more confirmed soldiers 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, — and they will be better soldiers 
of him by as much as they are good soldiers of their 
country. 

Now let us acknowledge our obligations in this matter, 
and take hold of hands and discharge those obligations. 
While you'thank God that he has raised up so many that 
are willing and eager to defend our country, and although 
you have contributed liberally of your means to prepare 



THE CAMP, ITS DANGERS AND DUTIES. 321 

them to go, you must remember that your duty toward 
them has but just begun to be performed. You must fol- 
low them with your prayers, morning, noon, and night. 
Not only that, you must see that their wants are provided 
for, and, more than all other things, that their moral wants 
are provided for. The church and camp must work to- 
gether in this great emergency. 

May God speed them that go forth ! Every morning, 
when I have arisen, for a week or ten days past, I have 
rushed down expecting to hear the tocsin of the battle. 
But as some lurid days that have thunders in them will 
not storm, but hold themselves aloof, and gather copper 
color in the sky, because the bolt is to fall with more ter- 
rific violence; so it seems to me that in the impressive 
silence which prevails the storm of battle is only collect- 
ing, and collecting, because the great conflict is coming 
ere long like God's thunder-crack ! When it does come I 
have not the least doubt as to where victory will issue; 
I have not the least doubt as to which side will triumph. 
I foresee the victory. I rejoice in it, in anticipation; not 
because it is to be on our side, but because it has pleased 
God, in his infinite mercy, to make liberty our side; not 
because we are North and they are South, but because 
we have civilization and they have barbarism, because we 
stand on the principle of equity and liberty, and they stand 
on the principle of slavery and injustice. It will be a moral 
victory more than a military victory. 

May God speed the day, give the victory, crown it with 
peace, restore unity, and make it more compact and endur- 
ing because freed from this contamination, this poison, in 
our system ! 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCI- 
PATION.* 



"And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the 
carcass of the lion ; and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in 
the carcass of the lion." — Judges xiv. 8. 



Samson was on an errand of love. He was interrupted 
by a lion, which he slew; for love is stronger than any lion. 
He gained his suit; but, alas ! everything went by con- 
traries thereafter. The woman whose love was at first 
sweeter to him than honey, betrayed him. She was his lion. 
Whereas, on his way to her he found that bees had pos- 
session of the real lion's carcass, and had filled it with 
honey. And so, in the end, the lion was better to him 
than his wife. 

But how full of suggestions is this incident. Who would 
have looked for honey behind a lion's paws ? While he 
was yet roaring and striking at Samson, there seemed very 
little likelihood of his finding a honeyed meal in him. But 
if lions bravely slain yield such food, let them become em- 
blems ! The bee signifies industry, among all nations; 
and honey is the very ideal of sweetness. 

To-day war is upon us. A lion is on our path. But, 
being bravely met, in its track shall industry settle, and 
we shall yet fetch honey from the carcass of war. You 
will not object, then, if, to-day, I bring you honey from 
this lion's body. 

At first, and to unhopeful souls, it would seem as if no 
day of Thanksgiving ever were so sadly planted. Nor will 
I undertake to persuade you that there are no evils to be- 
moan: there are many. But the evils are transient, super- 



* Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1861. 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. 323 

ficial, and vincible; the benefits are permanent, radical, 
and multiplying. 

Not long ago we were a united nation. Our industry 
was bringing in riches as the tides of the ocean; and no 
man could imagine the manhood of a continent whose 
youth was so august. 

Now, a line of fire runs through from east to west, and 
more than half a million men confront each other with 
hostile arms. Villages are burned; farms are deserted; 
neighbors are at bloody variance; industry stands still 
through fifteen States, or only forges implements of war. 
The sky at night is red with camp-fires; by day the ground 
trembles with the tramp of armies. Yet, amid many great 
and undeniable evils, which every Christian patriot must 
bitterly lament, there are eminent reasons for thankfulness, 
several of which I shall point out to you. 

I. Since we must accept this war, with all its undeniable 
evils, it is a matter for thanksgiving that the citizens and 
their lawful government of these United States can appeal 
to the Judge of the universe and to all right-minded men, 
to bear witness that it is not a war waged in the interest 
of any base passion, but, truly and religiously, in the de- 
fense of the highest interests ever committed to national 
keeping. It is not, on our side, a war of passion; nor of 
avarice; nor of anger; nor of revenge; nor of fear and 
jealousy. 

We hold that the territory of these United States is com- 
mon to all its inhabitants; and is, not simply a possession, 
but a trust. Unless by the deliberate decision of the law- 
fully assembled people of these United States, constitu- 
tionally expressed, that territory may neither be aban- 
doned, alienated, nor partitioned. We hold it in trust for 
the Future. Is it the duty of New York to defend its ter- 
ritory against foes without, and evil men within, from the 
Lake to Montauk Point ? Is it the duty of each New En- 
gland State to defend every foot within its jurisdiction ? In 
like manner, and for the same reasons, but in greater force, 
it is the duty of all the States collectively to maintain the 
integrity of the national domain. It is not a question of 



324 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

whether we will or will not. By the appointed and appro- 
priate methods of the Constitution that question has been 
taken from our hands. It is not subject to our volition. 
But we are bound, by that silent oath which every man as- 
sumes who comes to years of maturity as a citizen, to 
maintain inviolate the territory of these United States. 

It is the duty of the citizens, also, to stand up for their 
government; to protect its just authority; to maintain all 
its attributes; and to see to it that its jurisdiction is not 
restricted except by those methods which have been pre- 
determined and agreed upon in that Constitution on which 
it stands. 

But in our particular case, the reasons for maintaining 
the government in all its ample jurisdiction are intensified 
beyond all measuring by the fact that the dangers which 
are threatening it arise, confessedly and undeniably, riot 
from a perversion of the principles of our Constitution in 
our hands, nor from an oppressive administration of our 
government under these principles, but because a large 
body of men, gradually infected with new political doc- 
trines, in their nature irreconcilable with the root principle 
of our government, have determined to overthrow it, that 
they may change its fundamental principles. We are not 
left to infer this. There is this merit in Southern politi- 
cians, that they are frank and open in the declaration of 
their political doctrines. The best head among them is 
that of Mr. Stephens; and he declares in the most un- 
equivocal manner that the object of this rebellion is to in- 
troduce new principles in government. I shall read from 
him. 

" The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating 
questions relating to our peculiar institutions, — African slavery 
as it exists among us, — the proper status of the negro in our form 
of civilization." 

We shall see whether it has put them at rest " forever " 
or not. 

" T/iis was the tnunediate cause of the late riiptiere and present 
revolution. JEFFERSON, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as 
the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. 325 

What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But 
whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that 
rock stood 2Sidi stands, may be doubted, The prevailing ideas e>i- 
tertai}ied by him, and most of t lie leading statesmen ai the time 0/ the 
formation of the old Constitution, were, that the enslavement of the 
African was in violation of tJie laws of nature; that it was wrong 
in principle, socially, morally, and politically." 

I thank him for that testimony. 

" It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with ; but the 
general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or 
other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanes- 
cent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the 
Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time." 

This, you understand, is from the Vice-President of the 
Southern Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens. 

"The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guaranty 
to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can 
be justly used against the constitutional guaranties thus secured, 
because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, how- 
ever, were fundamejit ally -wrong. They rested upon the assumption 
of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foun- 
dation, and the idea of a government built upon it, — when the 
'storm came and the wind blew, it fell.' Our new government is 
founded upon exactly the opposite ideas." 

I thank him for his candor. 

" Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great 
truth that the negro is not equal to the white man ; that slavery, 
subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal 
condition." 

What a corner-stone that is for a government ! 

" This, our new government, is the first in the history of the 
world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral 
truth." 

And I will take the leave so far to interpolate his speech 
as to say that it w^ill be the last ! Further on he says (it is 
such excellent reading that I cannot deny myself the 
pleasure of edifying you): — 

"May we not therefore look with confidence to the ultimate 
universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system 



326 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

rests ? It is the first government ever instituted upon principles 
in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, 
in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments 
have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the 
classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of 
the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of 
nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against 
Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our sys- 
tem. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the 
foundation with the proper material, — the granite, — then comes 
the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made 
of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know 
that it is the best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior 
race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the 
Creator. // is not for us to itiquire into the luisdoni of his ordi- 
nances, or to question them. For his own purposes he has made 
one race to differ from another, as he has made ' one star to differ 
from another in glory.' The great objects of humanity are best 
attained when conformed to his laws and decrees, in the forma- 
tion of governments as well as in all things else. Our Confed- 
eracy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these 
laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders ' is be- 
come the chief stone of the corner' in our new edifice." 

These words, you will remember, were spoken of the 
Lord Jesus Christ, when he was set at naught and rejected 
by the Jews, his countrymen; and this Vice-President of 
the so-called Confederate States of America does not hesi- 
tate to declare that slavery stands, in their new system, in 
the place that the Lord Jesus Christ holds in the Christian 
system! It is the soul and center of it. It is the founda- 
tion and corner-stone. 

Dr. Smyth, of South Carolina, says: — 

" What is the difficulty, and what the remedy ? Not in the 
election of Republican Presidents. No. Not in the non-execu- 
tion of the Fugitive Bill. No. But it lies back of all these. It 
is found in that Atheistic Red Republican doctrine of the Declara- 
tion of Independence ! Until that is trampled under foot, there 
can be no peace." 

Until either that or its antagonist is trampled under 
foot, truly there can be no peace ! Which is to go under 
time will show. 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. 327 

This is, then, mark you, a rebellion, not against an op- 
pressive administration, but against the fundamental right 
of liberty in every man who has not forfeited it by crime. 
And it is declared, without equivocation or disguise, that 
the rebellion and the war are brought upon us because our 
Constitution contains and our government will enforce 
great principles of equity. The people of this nation are 
aroused to defend their Constitution and their govern- 
ment, not simply because they are assailed; but — as if 
Providence meant to make this conflict illustrious in the 
annals of the world — because they are assailed in those 
very respects in which they embody the latest fruits of 
Christianity and the latest attainments of modern civiliza- 
tion. The very things that belong to our age, in distinc- 
tion from every age before it, are the things that are 
singled out and made the objects of attack. We would 
defend our Constitution at any rate; but when it is 
charged with the noblest principles as if they were crimes, 
it appeals for its defense to every conscience and to every 
heart in this land with a solemnity as of the day of 
judgment. 

We are contending, not for that part of the Constitution 
which came in any way from Roman law, and expressed 
justice as it had been developed in the iron-hearted realm; 
but for that part which Christianity gave us, and which 
has been working forth into laws and customs for eighteen 
hundred years. The principle now in conflict is that very 
one which gives unity to history: it is that golden thread 
that leads us through the dark maze of nearly two thou- 
sand years, and connects us with the immortal Head of 
the Church, — the principle of man's rights based upon the 
divinity of his origin. Man from God, God a Father, and 
the race brothers, all alike standing on one great platform 
of justice and love, — the principle herein expressed has 
been the foundation of the struggle of eighteen hundred 
years; and it has been embodied (thanks to Puritan influ- 
ence) in our Constitution. And this the exponent of 
Southern views plainly declares to be the point of offense 
in our government. He says, in unmeasured terms, and 



32S PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

with impious boldness, that it is to put down that principle 
that the South are up in arms to-day. 

Is it no cause for thanksgiving, then, that since we must 
war, God has called us to battle on ground so high, for 
ends so noble, in a cause so pure, and for results so univer- 
sal ? For this is not a battle for ourselves alone. Every 
great deed nobly done is done for all mankind. A battle 
on the Potomac for our Constitution, as a document of lib- 
erty, is the world's battle. We are fighting, not merely 
for our liberty, but for those ideas that are the seeds and 
strength of liberty throughout the earth. There is not a 
man that feels the chain, there is not a man whose neck is 
stiff under the yoke, whether that man be serf, yeoman, or 
slave, who has not an interest in the conflict that we are 
set, in the providence of God, to wage against this mon- 
strous doctrine of iniquity. There is honey in that lion ! 

II. It is matter of thanksgiving that we have not sought 
this war, but, by a long and magnanimous course, have 
endured shame, and political loss, and disturbance the 
most serious, rather than peril the Union. Indeed, I 
am bound to say that, so strong was the national feeling 
with us, and so weak with Southern men, that we made an 
idol of that which they trod under foot with contempt; 
and like idolaters we threw ourselves down at the expense 
of our very self-respect before our idol of the Union. I do 
not mean that it would have been wrong to have taken the 
initiative in a cause so sacred as that which impels this 
conflict; but if, where the end is right and the cause is 
sacred, it can also be shown that there has been patience, 
honest and long-continued effort to preserve the right by 
peaceful methods, — by reasoning and by moral appeal, — 
and that that most desperate of all remedies, war, has been 
forced upon us (not sought, nor wished, but accepted re- 
luctantly) by the overt act of the rebellious States, then this 
patience and forbearance will give an added luster to our 
cause. 

I make these remarks out of respect to the Christian 
Public Sentiment of Nations. Contiguity is raising up a 
new element of power on the globe; and we do not hesitate 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. 3^9 

to pay a just respect to the opinions and expectations 
which Christian men and philanthropists of other lands 
have entertained. We stand up boldly before the earnest 
peace men, the kind advisers, the yearning mediators, yea, 
and before the body of Christ, — his Church on earth, — and 
declare that this war, which we could not avert without 
giving up all that Christian civilization has set us to guard 
and transmit, cannot be abandoned without betraying every 
principle of justice, rectitude, and liberty. We do not 
fear search and trial before the tribunal of the Christian 
world ! In the end, those who should have given sym- 
pathy, but have given, instead, chilling advice and ignorant 
rebuke, shall confess their mistake, and own our fealty to 
God, to government, and to mankind. When it would 
have swelled our sails, there was no breath of applause or 
sympathy. When the gale is no longer needed, and our 
victorious voyage is ended, we shall have incense and ad- 
miration enough ! But, meanwhile, God has called us to 
war upon a plane higher than feet ever trod before. 
Though we did not seek it, but prayed against it, and with 
long endurance sought to avoid and avert it, and reluc- 
tantly accepted it; now that it has come, it is infinite satis- 
faction to know that we can stand acquitted before the 
Christianity of the globe in such a conflict as this. There 
is honey in that lion ! 

III. It is a matter of thanksgiving that this war promises 
to solve those difficult problems which have baffled the 
wisdom of our wisest counselors. 

There stands in the Vatican at Rome a marble prophecy 
of America, — a noble and heroic man, on either side a 
lovely son, but all, father and sons, grasped in the coils of 
a many-times-enfolding serpent, whose tightening hold 
not their utmost strength can resist; and, with agonizing 
face, Laocoon looks up, as if his anguish said, " Only the 
gods can save, whose hate we have offended ! " 

So sat America. Around this government, and around 
the clustered States, twined the gigantic serpent of slavery. 
But here let the emblem stop. Let us hope another history 
than that of the fabled Greek. 



33° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Secret and open reasons many have made slavery a mat- 
ter most unmanageable in our national councils. Had it 
been desired to test to the uttermost the power of republi- 
can institutions to sustain good government, no other con- 
ceivable trial can be imagined that would do it as this haS' 
done, and as it will do it. It gathered up into its coils 
almost every one of those unmanageable elements, each 
one of which, alone, in other lands is counted a match for 
human wisdom. An inferior race, separated from us by 
physiological badges the most marked, and upon whom 
rested the added stigma of servitude; a people who com- 
ing from a tropical land brought in the element of climate; 
whose existence, in the relations of society and govern- 
ment, fed every one of the fiercer passions, touched but few 
of the moral sentiments, and these feebly, and educated 
men to idleness, avarice, lust, and pride of dominion, — 
these poor African bondmen, in all their helplessness and 
weakness, were yet able to plunge this nation into troubles 
and difficulties, of caste, of race, of condition, of climate, 
and of ambitious wealth, which the strongest and the wisest 
knew not how to heal or to endure. War seems likely to 
clear up the questions that Politics could not manage. 

By our organic law we were forbidden to meddle with 
local institutions, though they were injecting the national 
veins with poison. Though we saw that from these local 
institutions general and national influences were going 
forth, yet our organic principle of government would not 
permit us to lay our hand upon them. Neither could we 
bring to bear, for their suppression, in any ample degree, 
the moral forces by which other evils were met. No pub- 
lic sentiment in the North could make itself felt upon 
slavery: partly because no public sentiment can ever be 
transported from one section to another,— for ideas may 
travel, but influences must be developed among the people 
on whom they are to act,— and partly because of the igno- 
rance that prevailed, and must always prevail, among the 
common people where slave institutions exist. There was 
also a sectional pride, a sensitive jealousy, that must have 
prevented access to the South of any moral influence, un- 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. 331 

less it had been high, pure, and commanding. But the 
North had no such moral sentiment. The anti-slavery 
feeling of the North has always lacked unity. The whole 
North, by the insidious influences of commerce, of politics, 
and of sectarian religion, has been divided into three 
principal sections: the lowest, composed of those that 
were either indifferent to slavery or who favored it; the 
next, and most numerous, composed of those who, believ- 
ing it to be an evil, deemed themselves bound by political 
considerations, and by commercial interests, to forbear 
meddling with it; and the last, composed of the anti-slavery 
men of the North. These have been so divided among 
themselves, and so intolerant of each other's doctrine^ that 
they may be said to have expended as much strength ' 
against each other as they have unitedly exerted against 
slavery itself. What public sentiment could be hoped from 
such a condition of the community, that would have au- 
thority, or even influence, in the South ? 

And so we were drifting every year; the North, partly 
from the force of moral considerations, but even more 
from the amazing folly and arrogance of Southern political 
management, growing more and more consolidated for 
liberty; and the South, changing all its original political 
doctrines, and carrying down, with fatal gravitation, the 
conscience of the Church and the convictions of a feeble 
ministry, was becoming every year more determined for 
slavery. Thus each was having less and less influence 
with the other. 

^ It has pleased God, by the very infatuation of this gigan- 
tic evil, rudely to dash these two sections together. That 
out of this conflict liberty will come triumphant we do not 
for one moment doubt. That we see the beginning of 
national emancipation we firmly believe. And we would 
have you firmly to believe it, lest, fearing the loss of such 
an opportunity, you should over-eagerly grasp at accidental 
advantages, and seek to press forward the consummation 
by methods and measures which, freeing you from one evil, 
shall open the door for innumerable others, and fill our 
future with conflicts and immedicable trouble. 



332 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Good men in Great Britain expect us to make a Decree 
of Universal Emancipation. Had England, either by her 
government, or by the unmistakable language of the Chris- 
tian public, given the South to understand that there could 
be no possible sympathy or help for them from slave-hating 
England in their nefarious rebellion, we do not believe that 
this conspiracy against human rights would ever have 
taken its present terrible proportions. Whether England 
meant it or not, she has influenced the South powerfully in 
its attack against the Federal Government, and in its de- 
termination to establish republican institutions upon the 
principle of slavery. And this misfortune is not remedied 
by the condition upon which good men in England have 
been*pleased to promise their sympathy, — namely, that our 
government, assuming and usurping the proper power of 
the States, should pronounce a decree of universal eman- 
cipation, and convert this struggle into a war only for lib- 
erty to the African. It was not by England's sympathy 
that we became independent; it was not by her advice that 
we have grown to be her equal among the nations of the 
world; and we shall be able to settle our present troubles 
w^ithout her sympathy or succor. I am not so ungenerous 
as to cherish unkind feelings against the stock from which 
I am proud to have come. I am not surprised that the 
English nation, seldom able to understand foreign ideas 
and institutions, should be ignorant of the structure and 
nature of our government. We have been prepared, unfort- 
unately, for such a course by her past conduct. The liter- 
ature of England has been a fountain of liberty to Europe 
. and the world; but \h& government of England, more than 
any other on the globe, has frowned upon nations strug- 
gling for liberty, and subsidized the despots that were 
seeking to crush them. It is a matter of thanksgiving to 
God, that we are not placed in a condition where our suc- 
cess depends upon her succor. Let England abide at home 
and twirl her million spindles, and web the globe with her 
fabrics. She vi^ill not be a helper, but she shallh^ a specta- 
tor. In the quick-coming end, when all our troubles are 
settled, she will not then ungenerously withhold from us 



MODES AXD DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. ZZZ 

her admiration. When by actions and results we have 
proved ourselves worthy of those doctrines of human rights 
which God has intrusted to our advocacy and defense, in 
common with her, she shall give us, not, as now, ignorant 
advice, but, though late, a full measure of praise. Mean- 
while, we shall trust in God and do without England. 

It cannot be denied that this recommendation of imme- 
diate universal emancipation falls in with the Northern 
popular impulse. The evils of slavery have augmented 
to such a degree, the perils which it brings around our 
government have been now so strikingly revealed, that it is 
not surprising that men should desire at one blow to end 
the matter. If the Constitution of these United States, 
fairly interpreted, gives us the power to bring slavery to an 
end, God forbid that we should neglect such an opportu- 
nity for its exercise. But if that power is withheld, or can 
be exercised only with the most doubtful construction, — 
by a construction which shall not only weaken that instru- 
ment, but essentially change its nature, withdrawing from 
the States local sovereignty, and conferring upon Congress 
those rights of government which have thus been with- 
drawn from States, — then will not only slavery be destroyed, 
but with it our very government. How far our government, 
by a just use of its legitimate powers under the Constitu- 
tion, can avail itself of this war to limit or even to bring 
slavery to an end, is matter for the wisest deliberation of 
the wisest men. If there be in the hand of the war-power, 
as John Quincy Adams thought there was, a right of eman- 
cipation, then let that be shown, and, in God's name, be 
employed ! But if there be given to us no right by our 
Constitution to enter upon the States with a legislation 
subversive of their whole interior economy, not all the mis- 
chiefs of slavery, and certainly not our own impatience un- 
der its burdens and vexations, should tempt us to usurp it. 
This conflict must be carried on tJirough our institutions, 
not over them. Revolution is not the remedy for rebellion. 
The exercise on the part of our government of unlawful 
powers cannot be justified, except to save the nation from 
absolute destruction. 



334 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

The South, like an immense field of nettles, has been 
overrun with the pestilent heresies of State rights. Be- 
cause our hands are stinging with these poisonous weeds, 
we shall be tempted inconsiderately to go to the opposite 
extreme, and to gather up the diffused powers of the State 
and consolidate and centralize them in the National Gov- 
ernment. We must not forget that, while a government of 
confederated States sprang up, as it were, accidentally, it 
was yet one of those divine accidents which revealed the 
strongest form of government yet known to the world. 
No central government can ever take the place of State 
governments. No central heart could ever drive life-blood 
to the extremities of this vast empire. If all the myriad 
necessities and ever-growing interests of this continent are 
to be cared for; if the extremest State along the Russian 
frontier of the Northwest, or the southernmost one that 
neighbors Mexico, or the lacustrine States of the North, 
are all equally and alike to experience the benefits of good 
government, it must be by maintaining unimpaired in all 
its beneficence the American doctrine of the sovereignty 
of local government, except in those elements which have 
been clearly and undeniably transferred to the Federal 
Government. 

Slavery is our present evil and danger, but it is not the 
only danger; and we firmly believe that it has passed its 
crisis, and is running to its end. We are not to forget that 
Future which rises before the prophetic vision, with prom- 
ises of millennial glory. And yet every promise has its 
shadow. With every benefit there is a corresponding dan- 
ger. When slavery shall have wasted away, we shall not 
then be a nation without dangers. Foes lie concealed from 
us, but ready to spring from unsuspected ambush. The 
human heart is the great human enemy. Lawless passions 
are the State's perpetual danger. Destroy slavery, and you 
have not destroyed depravity. What is slavery but 
one way in which lust and avarice and ambition and 
indolence have sought to enthrone themselves? Destroy 
this throne, and will you have destroyed the occupants ? 
In the vast increase of States along the Pacific bounds, in 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMAiVC/PATION. 335 

the numerous brood of States born in that continental in- 
tervale which the Mississippi drains, in the older States 
along the Atlantic coast, are there to be no more gigantic 
strides of ambition, no factions, no infuriated military- 
struggles, no overgrown people drunk with prosperity? 
The ocean will sooner cease to be swept by storms, than 
this nation to be agitated by the passions of men. And 
while we array against these, in private, the influences of 
religion, the forces of education, and all the ameliorating 
influences of civilization, the nation itself will still need 
some armor of defense. That armor is the Constitution. 
Take that away, and this nation goes down into the field of 
its conflicts like a warrior without armor. 

This is not a plea against immediate emancipation; it is 
but a solemn caution, lest, smarting from wrong, we seize 
the opportunity inconsiderately to destroy one evil by a 
process that shall leave us at the mercy of all others that 
time may bring. 

Does any one ask me whether a law or a constitution is 
superior to the original principle of justice and of liberty? 
No; when law and constitution necessarily violate them, 
let them be changed; but when morality and justice and 
liberty may be wrought out by the Constitution, be that 
method chosen. Besides, plighted faith is itself in the 
nature of a sacred moral principle. The Constitution of 
these United States stands upon the plighted faith of all 
the several States over which it has authority. When we 
cannot abide by our promises, then in methods expressly 
provided we must withdraw the pledge and agreements, 
and stand apart, not only as separate peoples, but under 
new governments. 

These reasonings are all the more imperative because we 
are not shut up to doubtful constructions or violent methods 
for the suppression of slavery. We have seen its worst 
periods. The strength of its evil manhood is gone. Hence- 
forth it is a decrepit giant, growing daily more infirm. 
That it has been stricken with infatuation is shown by that 
war which it has provoked, and which will carry emanci- 
pation where slavery meant to secure new strength. What 



336 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the pen of the legislator could not do, that the sword shall 
do. The South have brought upon themselves what we 
never could have thrust upon them. There never was a 
more memorable instance of condign punishment follow- 
ing at the heels of trangression. The torch which they 
kindled for our destruction shall light the slaves to liberty. 
The true policy for slavery was to have retired their system 
from public view; but they have obtruded it, rather, with 
singular impertinence. They should have hidden it; but 
they have cast it before them as a very bulwark. They 
should have shielded it; but they have made it, rather, a 
shield for themselves, and compelled the armies of the 
United States, in striking at rebellion, to strike through 
the shield of slavery. Less than any other system would 
it bear disturbance; and yet they have brought an earth- 
quake upon it. We have not destroyed the government 
that we might strike slavery; they have sought to destroy 
the government that they might establish slavery; and if 
in re-establishing again the government, the sword shall 
strike off the shackle, it will be but one more illustration 
of that overruling Providence by which the wrath of man 
is made to praise God. Once more the stars on our im- 
mortal flag are stars of liberty. Wherever our armies go, 
emancipation goes. Confiscation is the punishment of re- 
bellion, and when applied to men, confiscation means lib- 
erty. 

What do we behold? Men, not in scores, but in hun- 
dreds and thousands, set free by no act of their masters, 
and by no rescript of mere political authority, are held by 
our government. Only six months ago these men, women, 
and children were under the local law in the South; but 
now they have gone out of the hands of their local mas- 
ters, and our government holds them. And how does it 
hold them? Are they men or chattels? Where will you 
find a law or a constitutional clause that gives the United 
States a right to look upon its subjects — human beings, 
endowed with intelligence, and with immortality behind 
that intelligence — as anything else than men ? You may 
call them "contraband," — you may with dexterity call 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. 337 

them ingenious or evasive names, but the Southern law 
that said "Slave" is broken! Slaves in the possession 
of the government of these United States can be nothing 
else than men. They are emancipated. There are to-day 
thousands and thousands of emancipated men in the pos- 
session of this government, and it is bound to treat them 
in some sort, if not as citizens, yet as men. 

And consider what will be the effect of the disturbance 
as our armies advance; — what swarms will rise up so soon 
as liberty is given them. In so vast a system as that of 
slavery, so loosely compacted, and so subject to fevers 
and inflammations, the reasons of the very disturbances of 
it, of the interruption of the occupations of the slaves, must 
break into their own darkened minds. The drilling of 
them for service, the putting them to the erection of forti- 
fications, the inuring them to work for purposes of man- 
hood, — all these things are preparing them for freedom. 

But that is not all: the South has consented to pay a 
premium of about two hundred millions of dollars for the 
encouragement of free-labor cotton ! Never was there such 
liberality since the world began ! They*have said to the 
world, " If you will only outbid us in the market, we will 
give you the opportunity. We have made our profits out 
of cotton, but we will agree to tie up our hands for two 
years, and let others take the two hundred millions of dol- 
lars, and raise the cotton." So the West Indies have 
planted cotton; India is raising it; China is raising it; they 
are planting cotton on the shores of Africa; and all the world 
has become a cotton-field, because there is a premium 
offered upon cotton that industry cannot but be interested 
in. And the thunder that rocks us is the calm that raises 
cotton in other lands. There seems a peculiar beauty in 
that justice by which, since cotton on these shores invoked 
the African from Africa, cotton on the African shores shall 
reach out its soft white hand and strike off the shackle on 
these shores. As cotton has made slavery, so cotton shall 
cure it. 

Let me, then, present, as another cause for the most pro- 
found thanksgiving, the fact that, although all the steps 



33^ PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and details of the process by which emancipation is to be 
accomplished are not yet apparent, we see the direction in 
which it is coming, and towards which it is traveling. 
War will do what peace could not; and what war leaves 
unaccomplished must soon come to pass from commercial 
reasons. For the first time since our Revolution, good men 
see the end of slavery near at hand ! 

Once more. When this great struggle is passed, it will 
lay the foundations of a peace firmer than we have ever 
had before. First, because it must extinguish that pesti- 
lent heresy of the absolute sovereignty of individual States. 
We are not thirty crowned sovereigns sitting in council to- 
gether; we are thirty united States whose general union 
and whose local independence are both alike distinct and 
immutable. The government cannot take away the local 
authority of the States, and the States may not usurp or 
resist the Federal Government in its proper sphere. 
Slavery is the burglar, but absolute State Sovereignty is 
the crevice into which the powder was sifted that was ex- 
pected to explode this government. The government must 
be made burgla1"-proof by stopping up all such seams. 

In the next place, this conflict, when ended, will bring 
the North and the South into a better mutual knowledge 
and respect. They have hitherto met chiefly in two places; 
at the watering-place, and in Congress. The South have 
come hither to such places as Saratoga and Newport. The 
people who congregate at our fashionable watering-places 
are not always the best exponents of Northern society. 
The other place where the North and the South met was 
in the halls of Congress; and Heaven forbid that it should 
be thought that the men hitherto there have fairly repre- 
sented Northern virtue or courage ! But now we have sent a 
representative body that we are quite willing should march 
through the South to tell them what Northern men are, 
and what Northern men can do. By the time our army 
has gone through the Southern States, there will be a 
change in public opinion there, with respect to the man- 
hood, the courage, the power, and the resources of the 
North. They have not respected us. They have not un- 



MODES AA'D DUTIES OE EMANCIPATION: 339 

derstood our civilization. Such is the inevitable condition 
of the men that slavery breeds, that they cannot under- 
stand the patience and forbearance of Christian civiliza- 
tion; and the thing that will best inoculate them with a 
proper appreciation of these matters is the armed hand. 
And when they find that we are courageous, a match, and 
more than a match, for them in arms, from that moment 
they will respect us. And when there is more respect in 
the South for the North, there will be a better chance for 
peace. 

There are likewise causes of rejoicing for the providen- 
tial events that have accompanied this struggle thus far. 
There have been years when, if this war had broken out, I 
know not how we should have maintained it. I shudder 
when I look back upon the condition in which the North 
has been. If ten years ago this struggle had been forced 
upon Us, our foes would have been of our own household. 
But what a journey have we made in ten years ! Not the 
distance from the Red Sea to the promised land was half 
so long as that over which we have passed. A great 
change has within that period taken place in the public 
sentiment of the North, and in the unity of good men. 
Since 1850 we have been going through a wonderful trans- 
formation. And not until we were in some sense prepared 
for it did God permit the evolution of the causes that 
brought to pass this crisis. And now it is a matter of 
thanksgiving that we are an undivided North. I do not 
mean that there are no reptiles that lurk and hiss; but I 
mean t^at they no sooner put their head 'above the earth 
than they are scotched ! The North stands like the old 
Apostle who, when he threw fuel on the fire, found a viper 
fastened on his hand. When the spectators saw it, they 
thought that he was only an escaped criminal, and that 
he would die; but when he shook the serpent off, and suf- 
fered no harm, they thought he was a god. And so the 
North, standing by its fiery war, and casting on fuel, finds 
upon its hand vipers; but it shakes them off and suffers no 
harm. We are a united, infrangible, indivisible North; and 
just as sure as the sun rises and sets, we shall be victorious. 



34° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Nor are we to forget that as "the stars in their courses 
fought against Sisera," as it were prefiguring the working 
of natural laws for God's purposes among men, so great 
agencies of nature have been, in this conflict, co-operating 
with us. Who of us that mourned and shuddered in the 
commercial crisis of '57 knew that God was saying, "Take 
in sail; put your ship in order: a great hurricane is 
about to fall upon you?" Nevertheless, we did put the 
ship in good condition; and now that the storm has fallen 
we understand the warning. And never was the North so 
well able to bear the pressure of war as now. Although 
individual men are failing, yet never was the North so rich, 
and so competent to carry on this conflict as now. 

Nor was that all: it pleased God to say to the winds, that 
did not know the reason; and to the rains, that knew not 
why; and to the sun, that, traveling far and near, fulfills 
God's purposes unknowingly, "Make the earth teem ! breed 
corn in every clod ! " And he that made the seven years 
of plenty to stand against the seven years of famine in 
Egypt, made two years of superabundance in our land, — 
for what ? To take the crown from the head of Cotton, and 
put it on the head of Corn. And why? Because this has 
been the peculiar boast of the South: "Cotton is king, and 
by its power we will bring France, with her haughty Em- 
peror, and England, with her needy mechanics, to our 
terms; and then we will crush the North." We do not 
know what God is saying to us. I went through the corn- 
field, — ignorant soul that I was, — and heard the rustling of 
the leaves. I thought it was only the wind blowing through 
the corn, and I did not hear the messages. It was God 
speaking in a literature that was uninterpreted to me then, 
but which now I understand. Every field in the North 
lifted up its long sword-blades and prefigured victorious 
arms; and every wind that came said, "Liberty is coming; 
Emancipation is coming; Corn shall dethrone Cotton ! " 
For now, just when manufacturing England would have 
required our ports to be opened, she happens to need our 
corn more than the cotton of the Southern States. She 
must feed her men before she gives their hands anything 



MODES AND DUTIES OF EMANCIPATION. 341 

to do. We come nearer to keeping them from starving 
than the South does to clothing them. And what do we 
see in France? The Emperor sits on his precarious seat, 
and finds it at present expedient to lay aside his preroga- 
tive of opening fresh budgets of expenses; and offers 
to restrict himself, and to economize, and to save money 
in various ways; while, if France had been in a con- 
dition of boundless prosperity, she might have wished 
to have a finger in matters here. Thus France is obliged 
to cut down her army. So we have guaranties for peace 
there, and guaranties for peace in England; and they 
will not stir to interfere with our affairs. This fight is 
to be fought out by ourselves. While preparations for 
this conflict have been going on, God has poured money 
into our coffers, and taken it away from those that might 
use it to our harm. He is holding back France and En- 
gland, and saying to all men and nations, "Appoint the 
bounds ! Let none enter the lists to interfere, while those 
gigantic warriors battle for victory ! Liberty and God, 
and Slavery and the Devil, stand over against each other, 
and let no man put hand or foot into the ring till they have 
done battle unto death ! " Amen. Even so, Lord God Al- 
mighty. It is thy decree ! And it shall stand ! And when 
the victory shall come, not unto us, not unto us, but — in 
the voice of thrice ten thousand, and thousands of thou- 
sands of ransomed ones, mingling with thine earthly chil- 
dren's gladness — unto thee shall be the praise and the 
glory, for ever and ever. Amen. 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN 
DEMOCRACY/ 



" So the king of the South shall come into his kingdom, and shall return 
into his own land. But his sons shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a 
multitude of great forces : and one shall certainly come, and overflow, and 
pass through : then shall he return, and be stirred up even to his fortress. 
And the king of the South shall be moved with choler, and shall come 
forth and fight with him, even with the king of the North : and he shall 
set forth a great multitude ; but the multitude shall be given into his hand. 
And when he hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up ; 
and he shall cast down many ten thousands ; but he shall not be strength- 
ened by it. For the king of the North shall return, and shall set forth a 
multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain 
years with a great army and with much riches. And in those times there 
shall many stand up against the king of the South ; also the robbers of thy 
people shall e.xalt themselves to establish the vision : but they shall fall. 
So the king of the North shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the 
most fenced cities : and the arms of the South shall not withstand, neither 
his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand. But 
he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will, and none 
shall stand before him ; and he shall stand in the glorious land, which by 
his hand shall be consumed. He shall also set his face to enter with the 
strength of his whole kingdom. And equality" — or conditions of equality 
— "shall be with him ; thus shall he do." — Dan. xi. 9-17. 



I DO not use these words in any close historical sense. 
They are a very poetic and glowing description of a con- 
flict in which, with a singular fitness to our times, both the 
terms North and South, and the events which were predicted, 
are strikingly suggestive. And although a sharp exegesis 
might destroy some parts of the seeming analogy, I shall 
consider them as a splendid poetic imagery. As such, I 
think you will agree with me that it is a remarkable pas- 
sage, and that it not only describes the past with great ac- 



* April 13, 1S62, the anniversary Sunday of the attack on Fort Sumter. 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 343 

curacy, but throws a blazing light upon the times that are 
to come. We are in the midst of times the most exciting; 
times that demand faith; times in which the teachings and 
prophecies of Scripture come with peculiar emphasis. 

You will remember the scenes of one year ago. It was 
just such a bright and beautiful day as this has been. The 
air was full of news. These great cities boiled like cal- 
drons. The people had learned that the guns had opened 
upon Fort Sumter. Treason was consummated ! Our 
hearts yearned toward the brave garrison. We hoped that 
the leaders and their companions in arms would sustain 
the stronghold. Our hearts felt the cold breath of horror, 
when at last it was known that the flag of the Union had 
been assaulted. The forts that had belched their fire upon 
that flag had been built underneath its protection. They 
had carried it for years upon their flag-staff. The very 
guns that were flaming upon it had been founded and 
forged under its flowing folds. The men that aimed them 
had been born and reared under its protection. That flag 
had been the honored ensign of our people in their memo- 
rable struggle for independence. It had seen the British 
arms laid down before it. It had been honored in every 
land. Our men-of-war had borne it, without disgrace, to 
every part of the world. Nor was there a port upon the 
globe where men chose or dared to insult that national 
emblem. That inglorious wickedness was reserved to our 
own people ! It was by American hands that it was dis- 
honored, slit with balls, and trailed in the dust ! 

That a crime so unnatural and monstrous was then going 
on, makes the anniversary of this day memorable above all 
Sabbaths of our history. It was an infernal insurrection 
against liberty, good government, and civilization, on the 
most sacred day of the week ! We shall not soon experi- 
ence a like excitement again. Although but a year ago, 
it seems ten years. And, in ordinary history, ten years are 
not so full of matter as has been this single year. It is full 
of events visible, but yet more full of those things that do 
not come under corporeal observation. 

Such has been the intensity of public feeling, that it has 



344 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

seemed as if nothing was doing. We have chidden those 
in authority, and felt that due speed had not been made. 
But within one twelvemonth a gigantic army has been 
raised and drilled; all its equipments created; all the ma- 
terial of war produced and collected together. The can- 
non that now reverberate across the continent, a twelve- 
month ago were sleeping ore in the mountains. The cloth- 
ing of thousands was fleece upon the backs of sheep. As 
we look back, we can scarcely believe our own senses, that 
so much has been done; although, at every single hour of 
it, it seemed as if little was being done, — for all the speed 
and all the power of this great government were not so 
fast and eager as our thoughts and desires were. 

A navy has sprung forth, almost at a word; and, stran- 
ger still, by the skill of our inventors and naval construct- 
ors, a new era has been inaugurated in naval warfare. It 
is probable that forts and ships have come to the end of 
one dispensation, and that the old is to give place here- 
after to the new. 

The history of this year is the history of the common 
people of America. It is memorable on account of the 
light that it throws upon them. We are fond of talking of 
American ideas. There are such things as American ideas, 
distinctive, peculiar, national. Not that they were first 
discovered here, or that they are only entertained here; 
but because more than anywhere else they lie at the root 
of the institutions, and are working out the laws and the 
policies, of this people. 

The root idea is this: that man is the most sacred trust 
of God to the world; that his value is derived from his 
moral relations, from his divinity. Looked at in his rela- 
tions to God and the eternal world, every man is so valu- 
able that you cannot make distinction between one and an- 
other. If you measure a man by the skill that he can ex- 
hibit, and the fruit of it, there is great distinction between 
one and another. Men are not each worth the same thing 
to society. All men cannot think with a like value, nor 
work with a like product. And if you measure man as a 
producing creature — that is, in his secular relations — men 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 345 

are not alike valuable. But when you measure men on 
their spiritual side, and in their affectional relations to God 
and the eternal world, the lowest nian is so immeasurable 
in value that you cannot make any practical difference be- 
tween one man and another. Although, doubtless, some 
are vastly above others, the lowest and least goes beyond 
your power of conceiving, and your power of measuring. 
This is the root idea, which, if not recognized, is yet opera- 
tive. It is the fundamental principle of our American scheme, 
that is, Man is above nature. Man, by virtue of his origi- 
nal endowment and affiliation to the Eternal Father, is 
superior to every other created thing. There is nothing to 
be compared with man. All governments are from him 
and for him, and not over him and upon him. All institu- 
tions are not his masters, but his servants. All days, all 
ordinances, all usages, come to minister to the chief and 
the king, God's son, man, of whom God only is master. 
Therefore he is to be thoroughly enlarged, thoroughly em- 
powered by development, and then thoroughly trusted. 
This is the American idea, — for we stand in contrast with 
the world in holding and teaching it; that men, having been 
once thoroughly educated, are to be absolutely trusted. 

The education of the common people follows, then, as a 
necessity. They are to be fitted to govern. Since all 
things are from them and for them, they must be educated 
to their function, to their destiny. No pains are spared, 
we know, in Europe, to educate princes and nobles who 
are to govern. No expense is counted too great, in Europe, 
to prepare the governing classes for their function. 
America has her governing class, too; and that governing 
class is the whole people. It is a slower work, because it 
is so much larger. It is never carried so high, because 
there is so much more of it. It is easy to lift up a crowned 
class. It is not easy to lift up society from the very foun- 
dation. That is the work of centuries. And therefore, 
though we have not an education so deep nor so high as it 
is in some other places, we have it broader than it is any- 
where else in the world; and we have learned that for 
ordinary affairs intelligence among the common people is 



346 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

better than treasures of knowledge among particular 
classes of the people. School books do more for the coun- 
try than encyclopaedias. 

And so there comes up the American conception of a 
common people as an order of nobility, or as standing in 
the same place to us that orders of nobility stand to other 
peoples. Not that, after our educated men and men of 
genius are counted out, we call all that remain the common 
people. The whole community, top and bottom and inter- 
mediate, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, 
the leaders and the followers, constitute with us the com- 
monwealth; in which laws spring from the people, admin- 
istration conforms to their wishes, and they are made the 
final judges of every interest of the State. 

In America there is not one single element of civilization 
that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion. 
Art, law, administration, policy, reformations of morals, 
religious teaching, all derive, in our form of society, the 
most potent influence from the common people. For al- 
though the common people are educated in preconceived 
notions of religion, the great intuitions and instincts of the 
heart of man rise up afterwards, and in their turn influence 
back. So there is action and reaction. 

It is this very thing that has led men that are educated, 
in Europe, to doubt the stability of our nation. Owing to 
a strange ignorance on their part, our glory has seemed to 
them our shame, and our strength has seemed to them our 
weakness, and our invincibility has seemed to them our 
disaster and defeat. This impression of Europeans has 
been expressed in England in language that has surprised 
us, and that one day will surprise them. We know more 
of it in England because the English language is our 
mother tongue, and we are more concerned to know what 
England thinks of us than any other nation. 

But it is impossible that nations educated into sympathy 
with strong governments, and with the side of those that 
govern, should sympathize with the governed. In this 
country the sympathy goes with the governed, and not 
with the governing, as much as in the other countries it 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 347 

goes with the governing, and not with the governed. And 
abroad they are measuring by a false rule, and by ahome- 
'bred and one-sided sympathy. 

It is impossible for men who have not seen it to under- 
stand that there is no society possible that will bear such 
expansion and contraction, such strains and burdens, as a 
society made up of free educated common people, with 
democratic institutions. It has been supposed that such a 
society was the most unsafe, and the least capable of control 
of any. But whether tested by external pressure, or, as now, 
by the most wondrous internal evils, an educated demo- 
cratic people are the strongest government that can be made 
on the face of the earth. In no other form of society is it so 
safe to set discussion at large. Nowhere else is there such 
safety in the midst of apparent conflagration. Nowhere 
else is there such entire rule, when there seems to be such 
entire anarchy. A foreigner would think, pending a presi- 
dential election, that the end of the world had come. The 
people roar and dash like an ocean. " No government," 
he would say, " was ever strong enough to hold such wild 
and tumultuous enthusiasm, and zeal, and rage." True. 
There is not a government strong enough to hold them. 
Nothing but j-^Z/'-government will do it: that will. Edu- 
cate men to take care of themselves, individually and in 
masses, and then let the winds blow; then let the storms 
fall; then let excitements burn, and men will learn to move 
freely upon each other, as do drops of water in the ocean. 
Our experience from generation to generation has shown 
that, though we may have fantastic excitements; though 
the whole land may seem to have swung from its moorings 
on a sea of the wildest agitation, we have only to let the 
silent-dropping paper go into the box, and that is the end 
of the commotion. To-day, the flames mount to heaven; 
and on every side you hear the most extravagant prophe- 
cies and the fiercest objurgations; and both sides know 
that, if they do not succeed, the end of the world will have 
come. But to-morrow the vote is declared, and each side 
go home laughing, to take hold of the plough and the spade; 
and they are satisfied that the nation is safe after all. 



348 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

And we have come to ridicule the idea of danger from 
excitements. Where else was there ever a nation that 
could bear to have every question, no matter how fiery or 
how fierce, let loose to go up and down, over hill and 
through valley, without police or government restraint 
upon the absolute liberty of the common people ? Where 
else was ever a government that could bear to allow entire 
free discussion ? We grow strong under it. Voting is the 
cure of evil with us. Liberty, that is dangerous abroad, is 
our very safety. And since our whole future depends upon 
our rightly understanding this matter, — the liberty of the 
common people, and the glory of the common people, — 
and since this government of our educated common people 
is to be the death of slavery, and to spread over this con- 
tinent an order of things for which in past experience there 
is no parallel, and for which men's ideas are not prepared, 
— we do well to take heed of this memorable year of the 
common people. For histories will register this year of 
1861-62 as the year of the common people of America. 

I. One year ago there fell a storm upon the great heart 
of the cornmon people, which swayed it as the ocean is 
swayed. It has not calmed itself yet. It was that -shot at 
the American flag that touched the national heart. No 
one knew before what a depth of feeling was there. We 
did not know how our people had clustered about that 
banner all their ideas of honor and patriotism and glory. 
We did not know how the past and future met and stood 
together upon that flag in the imagination of every Amer- 
ican. In an hour all this was disclosed. And what was 
the manifestation of that hour? All things that separated 
the common people of America were at once forgotten. 
There rose up, with appalling majesty, the multitude of 
the common people. The schemes of treachery, the polit- 
ical webs that had been framed, went down in a moment; 
and the voice of the common people it was that called the 
government to be energetic, to take courage, and to rescue 
the land. 

But I would not have you suppose that the common peo- 
ple gave forth merely an unreasoning zeal, — a furious burst 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 349 

of patriotic emotion. The common people of the North 
had, and they still have, a clear, comprehensive, and true 
idea of American nationality, such as we looked for in vain 
in many of the leaders of past times. They had taken in 
the right view of national unity. They had a right view 
of the trust of territory held in common by all, for all, on 
this continent. They felt, more than any others, that Di- 
vine Providence had given to this people, not a northern 
part, not a middle ridge, not a southern section, but an un- 
divided continent. They held it, not for pride, not for 
national vanity, not to be cut and split into warring sec- 
tions, but as a sacred trust, held for sublimest ends of 
human happiness, in human liberty. And the instincts and 
intuitions of the common people it was that made this, 
not a struggle for sectional precedency, but a struggle for 
the maintenance of the great national trust, and for the 
establishment of American ideas over the whole American 
continent. And our government felt that they could lean 
back on the brave heart of the great intelligent people. 

While, then, men of our own blood are ignorant and 
blind; while even to this hour the ablest statesmen in the 
British Parliament are declaring, though in a friendly 
spirit in most respects, that it were better that an amicable 
settlement and separation should take place, and that they 
should live apart who cannot live peaceably together, our 
common people are greater than parliaments or than min- 
isters; and they see, and feel, and know, that God has 
rolled upon them a duty, not of present peace, but of 
future stability, national grandeur, and continental liberty. 
This is the doctrine of the common people, and it will stand. 

For that idea our common people are giving their sons, 
their blood, and their treasure, and they will continue to 
the uttermost to give them. 

For this sake see what a common people can do. One 
of the most difficult things for any people to do, for any 
reason, is to lay aside their animosities and malignant feel- 
ings. But this great common people have laid aside every 
animosity, every party feeling, and all political disagree- 
ments; and for one year they have maintained an honest 



35° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

unity. I a;n more proud of the substantial unity that has 
been wrought out in the North, than of any battle that has 
been fought. It is the noblest evidence of the strength of 
our form of government. 

The common people have given without stint their sons, 
their substance, and their ingenuity: and they are not 
weary of giving. They have consented patiently to the 
interruption of their industries, and to all the burdens 
which taxes bring. Taxes touch men in a very tender 
place; for human nature resides very strongly in the par- 
ticular neighborhood where taxes anchor. And if any- 
thing takes hold of men and brings them to their bearings, 
it is the imposition of burdens that are felt in the pocket. 
I sometimes think that men can carry burdens on their 
hearts more easily than on their exchequer. But they have 
taken both the burdens of taxation and bereavements, they 
have given both blood and money; and they are willing to 
bear the load as long as it is necessary to secure this con- 
tinent to liberty. 

They have demanded of this Administration which they 
themselves ordained, that it should not spare them. The 
only thing that the people have ever been disposed to 
blame the government for has been that it has not moved 
fast enough; that it has not done enough. "Take more; 
call for more; do more!" is the demand of the people 
upon the government. 

They have accepted the most unwonted and dangerous 
violations of the fundamental usages of this land with im- 
plicit submission. They are a proud people, jealous of 
their rights; a proud people, the flash of whose eye is like 
blood when they are wronged in their fundamental rights; 
and yet, the precious writ of habeas corpus has been sus- 
pended, and they have consented. They have been re- 
stricted in their intercourse to a degree altogether unprece- 
dented, and they have judged it expedient to submit. 

They have submitted to the limitation of speech and 
discussion, — a thing most foreign to American ideas. The 
arrest of men without legal process or accusation, and their 
imprisonment and long duress without trial, — these are 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 35 i 

new in our times and in tliis land. And yet, under all 
these interruptions of our most grave and important prin- 
ciples and rights, the people have been calm; they have 
trusted their government; and they have been willing to 
wait. 

These are dangerous things, even in extremity; but for 
their sakes who control the affairs of this nation, and that 
they might have the most unlimited power to crush the 
rebellion, and establish liberty, the common people, with 
magnanimous generosity, have yielded up these imperish- 
able rights. 

When the whole national heart beat with gratification at 
the arrest of men who had been at the root of this grand 
treachery, mark, I beseech of you, the bearing of the com- 
mon people of America. If there was one thing about 
which they were expected to rage like wolves, it was this. 
Nothing in external circumstances could be more irritating 
and aggravating than those exhibitions of foreign feeling 
which came to our knowledge. I know that the diplomatic 
language of the two governments was very smooth and un- 
exceptionable; and I am informed that the tone of many 
of the local papers of England was kind; but all the En- 
glish papers that I saw, with one or two exceptions, were 
of such a spirit that I will characterize them only by say- 
ing that gooc| breeding was not common where the editors of 
them lived. If there was one single missile more offensive 
than another, it was eagerly sought out. Tried on the side 
of revenge; tried on the side of national animosities; tried 
by foreign impertinence and unkindness; tried at home in 
the midst of treachery, in the midst of war, in the midst of 
troubles and burdens, and in the midst of an interrupted 
commerce, — mark the heroic conduct of this great Ameri- 
can people. 

Government pronounced its judgment against the feel- 
ings and expectations of the common people. Slidell and 
Mason were to be given up. There was silence instantly, 
and thoughtfulness, throughout this land. Then came ac- 
quiescence, full, cheerful, uncomplaining. I have yet to see 
a single paper that seriously, after the appearance of the 



352 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

letter of the Secretary of State, made one complaint or ill- 
natured remark. Such a thing was never before seen in 
the history of the world. Mason and Slidell might have 
been taken from Washington to Boston Harbor under the 
care of a single officer, without molestation from the com- 
mon people of America. These are the common people 
that they are pleased to call the mob of America; but not 
among the crowned heads and privileged classes, not 
among any other people on the earth, is there such stabil- 
ity, such order, such self-restraint, such dignity, and such sub- 
lime nobility, as there is among the educated common people 
of America. God bless them ! Under the terrible inflic- 
tions of battle, under griefs innumerable, in the midst of 
desolations that go to the very heart of families, there is 
the same noble, patient, uncomplaining cheerfulness and 
devotion to this great cause. 

II. The history of this year has silently developed many 
convictions based upon great truths. It has, in the first 
place, revolutionized the whole opinion of men as to the 
relative military power of the Free States and Slave States 
of America. It was an almost undisputed judgment, that 
the habits of the South bred prowess; that they werechiv- 
alric; that their educated men were better officers than 
ours; and that their common people, in the hour of battle, 
would be better soldiers than the laboring classes of the 
North. It never was our faith, it never was our belief, but 
that the laboring and educated common people were just 
as much better for military development, when the time 
came, as for ordinary industrial purposes. Events have 
justified our impressions in this regard. 

Let us look, for a moment, at the line of battle. Passing 
by the earlier conflicts prematurely brought on, in which 
the advantage was, without good conduct on either side, 
in favor of Southern men, what is the general conclusion 
from that line of conflicts that subsequently followed each 
other almost without interruption, from Hilton Head, 
Beaufort, Roanoke, New-Berne, Fort Henry, Fort Donel- 
son, Somerset, Nashville, Island Number Ten, Pittsburg 
Landinor? 




/Kct^^i^^-.^ /'/-:;^^.-i.u-'^>c^^<yC 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 353 

Without further particularizing, what have been the 
general results of this series of conflicts ? The rebels are 
swept out of the upper and eastern parts of Virginia. They 
have lost one portion of North Carolina. Their seaboard 
is almost taken from them. They have been driven from 
Kentucky and Missouri, and in Tennessee they are close 
pressed on Memphis itself. They are on the eve, appar- 
ently, of losing the great metropolis of the Southwest. 
And has there been one single field in which Northern en- 
durance and courage have not been made to appear emi- 
nent over Southern ? In the battle of Pittsburg Landing 
what a disparity there was in generalship between the 
North and the South ! That battle was won by the soldiers. 
The Southwestern men had every advantage in military 
skill, and on our side the only advantage was that we had 
men who would not be beaten. Our soldiers had little help 
of generalship. It was hands, and not brains, that con- 
quered there. 

This matter, then, will, from this time forth, stand on 
different ground. It is not for the sake of vainglorying 
that I make these allusions. If it were not that I have a 
moral end in view, I should think them unseasonable; but we 
shall never have peace until we have respect, we shall never 
have respect so long as a boasting Southern effete popula- 
tion think that they can overmaster Northern sturdy yeo- 
men. When they know what Northern muscle and blows 
mean, they will respect them; and when they respect them, 
we shall be able to live in harmony with them: and not 
till then. 

But there are many other things that have been evolved 
in the history of the year. There have been convictions 
wrought in the minds of the thinking common people that 
will not be easily worn out. There is coming to be a gen- 
eral conviction, that men brought up under the influence 
of slavery are contaminated to the very root, and they can- 
not make good citizens of a republic. The radical nature 
of slavery is such as to destroy the possibility of good citi- 
zenship in the masses of men. Exceptions there are, 
because even in the Slave States there are large neighbor- 



354 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

hoods where slavery does not exist, and where many men 
are superior to their circumstances. But the average ten- 
dency of slave influences is to narrow men; to make them 
selfish; to unfit them for public spirit; to destroy that 
large patriotism from which comes the feeling of nation- 
ality. 

I think there is a widening conviction, that slavery and 
its laws, and liberty and its institutions, cannot exist un- 
der one government. And I think that, if it were not for 
the impediment of supposed constitutional restrictions 
there would be an almost universal disposition to sweep, 
as with a deluge, this gigantic evil out of our land. The 
feeling of the people in this matter is unmistakable. The 
recommendation of the President of these United States, 
which has been corroborated by the resolution of Con- 
gress, is one of the most memorable events of our history. 
The fact that a policy of emancipation has been recom- 
mended by the Chief Magistrate, and indorsed by Con- 
gress, cannot be overestimated in importance. Old John 
Quincy Adams lifted his head in the grave, methinks, 
when that resolution was carried, — he that was almost 
condemned for treason because he dared to introduce in 
Congress a subject that looked towards emancipation. 
Last Friday — a day not henceforth to be counted inauspi- 
cious — was passed the memorable bill giving liberty to the 
slave in the District of Columbia. One might almost say, 
if the President had signed it, " Lord, now let thy servant 
depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes 
have seen thy salvation." It is worth living for a lifetime 
to see the capital of our government redeemed from the 
stigma and shame of being a slave mart. I cannot doubt 
that the President of the United States will sign that bill. 
It shall not shake my confidence in him, but it certainly 
will not change my judgment that it should be signed, if 
he does not sign it. It would have been better if it had 
been signed the moment that it was received; but we 
have found out by experience that though Abraham Lin- 
coln is sure, he is slow; and that though he is slow, he is 
sure ! 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 355 

I think that it is beginning to be seen that the North, 
for its own sake, must exert every proper constitutional in- 
fluence, and every moral influence, to cleanse the South 
from the contamination of slavery. What gambling- 
houses and drinking-saloons are to the young men of a 
neighborhood, taking hold of their animal passions, and 
corrupting them where human nature is most temptable, 
undermining their character, and wasting their stamina, 
that Southern marts are to our common people. The ani- 
mal parts of our nature come naturally into sympathy 
with the South. The Southern institution is an academy 
of corruption to the animal feelings of the whole people, 
and it will continue to be throwing back into our system 
elements of inflammation and trouble as long as it exists. 
I dread such a settlement of this controversy as will fol- 
low whenever all malignant passions and political machi- 
nations shall have swept the bad men of the North and of 
the South together again for future legislation. 

We have begun, also, to suspect another thing, which 
we shall learn more and more thoroughly; and that is, 
that hereafter, in this nation, the North must prevail. For 
the North is the nation, and the South is but the fringe. 
The heart is here; the trunk is here; the brain is here. 
The most exquisite compliment ever paid to New England 
was in the secret scheme and machination of the leaders 
of the rebellion, which it was supposed would be success- 
ful. They meant to threaten secession and war, and 
arouse a party in the North that would unite with them, 
and then reconstruct in such a way as to leave New En- 
gland out, and take all the rest of the nation in. Had 
they succeeded, they would have been in the condition of 
a man that should go to bed whole at night, and wake 
up in the morning without his head ! For the brain of 
this nation is New England. There is not a part that does 
not derive its stimulus and supply from that fountain of 
laws and ideas. Well may they wish to exclude from their 
corrupt constitution and laws that part of this nation 
which has been the throne of God. Well may they desire 
to separate themselves from that portion of our country 



356 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

which has been the source of all that is godlike in Ameri- 
can history. But I do not think that they will cut off our 
head. And hereafter I think it will be felt more and more 
that the North is the nation: not New England, but the 
whole North from ocean to ocean, — all that is comprised 
in the Northern loyal Free States. It is the foundation of 
industry; it is the school of intelligence; it is the home of 
civilized institutions; it is the repository of those princi- 
ples which are the foundation of our political fabric; and 
if we hope to save the government and our peculiar ideas, 
it is the North that must save them, and not the South. 
We may just as well say it as to disguise it. Whatever 
may be wise or unwise, expedient or inexpedient, in times 
of party management, I do not hesitate to say, and I re- 
peat it again and again, that the North is this nation, and 
that the North must govern it: not against the Constitu- 
tion, but by the Constitution; not against law, but through 
law; not for selfishness, but for the well-being of the 
whole; not to aggrandize itself, but to enrich every State 
in the Union, from the North to the South, and from the 
East to the West. The South are prodigal sons; they are 
wasters; they are destroyers. The North has conservative 
forces; and now that she has come to govern, she will be 
derelict, she will forfeit every claim to respect, and she will 
bring the judgment of God on her head, if she hesitates 
to take the government, and maintain it till she has car- 
ried the principles of the American people of this conti- 
nent triumphantly through. 

Since, then, her ascendency means liberty, the thrift of 
the common people, and the progress of civilization, the 
North owes it to the nation itself not to yield up that as- 
cendency. One side or the other must prevail. Let it be 
that side that carries forward to the future the precious 
legacies of the past. There go two principles looking to 
the future. One is represented by our flag, and all its 
starry folds. Liberty; democratic equality; Christianity; 
God, the only king; right, the only barrier and restraint; 
and then, God and right being respected, liberty to all, 
from top to bottom, and the more liberty the stronger and 



THE SUCCESS OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY. 357 

safer, — that is the Northern conception. And that is the 
precious seed that shall pierce to State after State, rolling 
westward her empire. What has the North done ? Look 
at Michigan; look at Ohio; look at Indiana; look at Illi- 
nois; look at Wisconsin; look at Iowa. These are the 
fruits of Northern ideas. And where is the South ? Look 
at Missouri; look at Texas. See what States she rears. 
And which of these shall be the seed-planter of the future ? 
Which shall carry the victorious banner ? Shall the South 
carry her bastard bunting, bearing the pestiferous seed of 
slavery, degradation, and national rottenness? or shall the 
North, advancing her banner, carry with her stars and 
stripes all that they symbolize, — God's glory in man's lib- 
erty? I think — and I thank God for it — that the great 
heart of this people is beginning to accept this destiny, 
and that it is becoming the pride of their future. 

There is but one other thing that I will say, for I do not 
wish to weary you with too long a discussion of that which is 
dear to my own heart as life itself. While there have been 
many incidental ills and evils occasioned by the present 
conflict, it has had one good effect in amalgamating this 
heterogeneous people. Since we have received millions 
from foreign lands, there have been some political jealous- 
ies toward those belonging to other nations. I think you 
have seen the end of that most un-American Native-Amer- 
icanism. There is not one nation that has not contributed 
its quota to fight the battles of liberty. The blood of 
the Yankee has mingled with the blood of the Irishman. 
Right beside our Curtis was the noble Sigel. Right by the 
side of the wounded American lay the wounded German. 
Two tongues met when they spoke the common words,Land, 
Liberty, God, and Freedom. And now there is no foreign 
blood among us. They are ours. They have earned their 
birth here. Their nativity is as if our mothers bore them 
and nursed them. America has received all her foreign 
population, now, with a more glorious adoption, and they 
are our kindred. God be thanked for this substantial 
benefit. War, with all its horrors, is not without its inci- 
dental advantages. 



358 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Is the year, then, that is just past, to have a parallel and 
sequence in the year that is come ? What is to be the fut- 
ure ? What are our prospects and hopes ? I am not a 
prophet. I cannot lift the veil from what is before us. I 
can only express my own judgment. Perhaps you think I 
am sanguine. I think I am not sanguine, though I am 
hopeful. And yet I have no other thought than that vic- 
tory awaits us at every step. We are able to bear our share 
of defeat. If the blessing of liberty is too great to be 
purchased at so cheap a price, let God tell us the price, and 
we are ready to pay it. We have more sons to give. We 
can live lower, and on less. Our patience is scarcely drawn 
upon. The sources of our prosperity are hardly touched. 
And I think I may say for you, and the great American 
common people, " We will give every dollar that we are 
worth, every child that we have, and our own selves; we 
will bring all that we are, and all that we have, and offer 
them up freely; but this country shall be one, and undi- 
vided. We will have one Constitution, and one liberty, and 
that universal." The Atlantic shall sound it, and the 
Pacific shall echo it back, deep answering to deep, and it 
shall reverberate from the Lakes on the North to the un- 
frozen Gulf on the South, — " One nation; one Constitu- 
tion; one starry banner!" Hear it, England! — one 
country, and indivisible. Hear it, Europe ! — one people, 
and inseparable. One God; one hope; one baptism; one 
Constitution; one government; one nation; one country; 
one people, — cost what it may, we will have it ! 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY/ 



" Blessed be thou, Lord God of Israel, our Father, for ever and ever. 
Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the vic- 
tory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is 
thine ; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above 
all. Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou reignest over all ; and 
in thine hand is power and might ; and in thine hand it is to make great, 
and to give strength unto all. Now, therefore, our God, we thank thee, and 
praise thy glorious name." — i Chron. xxiic. 10-13. 



This is one of the most sublime national ascriptions of 
power and government to God that was ever made. It 
fell from the lips of David, speaking upon one of the most 
momentous festival occasions in the Jewish history, and 
became, by acceptance, the sentiment of the whole people. 
They declared their faith in God's supremacy and govern- 
ment over the affairs, not only of individuals, but of na- 
tions. They recognized and acknowledged, not only their 
dependence upon God personally, but also their depend- 
ence upon him for national prosperity and glory. It is the 
uniform doctrine of the Bible, that God has a government 
over this world, which includes in it both the government 
of individuals and the government of communities of in- 
dividuals. This doctrine is not peculiar either to Chris- 
tianity or to Judaism. All nations that have attained any 
degree of civilization have substantially held this great 
truth, that the world is governed by God, and that not only 
the affairs of individuals, but the affairs of societies also, 
were supervised and provided for under the Divine gov- 
ernment. But in the sacred Word the government of God 



* September 28, 1862. Emancipation was proclaimed six days before ; 
the habeas corpus suspended four days before ; Lee had retreated after An- 
tietam, Bragg was still strong in Kentucky, and men's minds were deeply 
exercised over the question of the President's War Powers. 



360 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

over nations is taught with more intelligence, with more 
discrimination, with a clearer revelation of the principles 
on which that government stands, than ever it was taught 
elsewhere. All religions recognize the fact of government. 
It is a peculiarity of the Christian faith, in its antecedents, 
and in its own self, that it reveals the ground and methods 
of the Divine moral government over the world. 

It is important to know that the government of God over 
nations is conducted by an administration of natural laws. 
There are many who have thought that God governed as 
an absolute monarch, looking at such things as pleased 
him, and rewarding them by a direct personal volition, and 
looking at such things a3 displeased him, and punishing 
them by a direct personal volition. There are many who 
revolt from the moral government of a Being of whom it 
is taught that he interjects his own volitions upon the 
stated laws of nature. And the progress of science reveals 
the fact more and more plainly that there is not any in- 
terference with natural law. It equally lays the founda- 
tion for the better exposition of the doctrine of the Divine 
government, — namely, that it is a government over this 
world through natural laws, and by a Divine administra- 
tion of them. It is said that natural laws are stated and 
immutable. That is very well for a popular expression, 
but it will not bear examination. For there is nothing 
that is less immutable than a law; nothing that is adapted 
to have more elasticity; nothing that may be more end- 
lessly varied by the degree of intelligence that you bring 
to bear upon it, and the advantage which you choose to 
take of it. An ignorant and stupid man, standing in the 
scope of a natural law, makes nothing of it. An intelli- 
gent and wise man, by using it, makes the fields fruitful, 
covers the hillsides with thrifty orchards, and fills the val- 
leys with beautiful gardens. And the difference between 
a stupid and ignorant man and a wise and intelligent man 
is simply the difference of the control that they bring to 
bear upon natural laws, and the use to which they put 
them. And the difference between civilization and bar- 
barism is the difference between knowing how to use nat- 



NATIOJVAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 361 

ural laws and not knowing how to use them. And as men 
grow toward manhood, they come more and more to 
know what natural laws are, and how to use them, and 
how, by using them, to obtain benefit. How much more, 
then, shall He that made man know how to use natural 
law ! It is supposed that God made laws as a machine 
which he does not dare to put his finger into, lest he shall 
stop the machine, or bruise his finger; and that he there- 
fore stands behind the world, saying, " I have built this 
world, and put laws into it, and wound it up, and I cannot 
touch it." It is not so. God manages natural laws, 
just as man manages natural laws, only with supreme 
intelligence and with unerring accuracy. A govern- 
ment of natural law is the best government on which 
volition can be brought to bear. For the Divine scheme 
is so large and so broad that there is not a thought 
nor a wish to be executed that God cannot execute better 
through changes under law than by direct, overt omnipo- 
tence. And there is no occasion to interject volitions, and 
set aside' natural law. 

This does not diminish, it augments immeasurably, the 
efficiency and certainty of the Divine government over 
men. If the Divine government depended upon a single 
being's thought and continuity of attention, it might be 
imagined at least that there would be remissness or weari- 
ness and slumbering, — though He that keeps Israel never 
slumbers nor sleeps. If God's government is one of ap- 
pointed laws that have no remission and never cease their 
agency, if there are treasured in them great penalties and 
great rewards, if the government of natural law is self- 
executing, and if God gives it power to roll on and dis- 
tribute mercies and curses, according as they are, one or 
the other, fit and proper, then the system of administra- 
tion is one from which there is no escape. 

Now God's government over nations is a government 
through natural laws. It is universal. It is unvarying. 
It is immutable. It is not to be escaped. 

The administration of God over nations is conducted 
substantially upon the same great principles as that over 



362 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

individuals. A nation is but an aggregation of individuals. 
There is more in national life than there is in any individ- 
ual life; but men individually carry with them into civil 
federation every law and necessity .that they have as individ- 
uals. They leave nothing behind. They take on addi- 
tional obligations, and come under some additional laws; 
but they leave off nothing. And the administration of gov- 
ernment that prevails over individuals prevails over them 
as much when they are aggregated into societies as when 
they stand alone. It is true that the conditions and the 
methods of evolution in nations differ from those in individ- 
ual life. The life of an individual is quickly sped. What- 
ever takes place with regard to a man must take place in a 
period of some eighty years. And if an individual is indolent, 
his indolence very soon makes its penalty appear. Drunk- 
enness in a man does not wait through many generations. 
The penalty must appear during his life, or it cannot be a 
penalty. The penalty of dishonesty and dishonor comes 
quickly to a man. For the circle in which an individual 
moves is small, and he comes to the result of his conduct 
soon. But a nation is made up of millions of individuals, 
that splice each other and overlap generations, so that 
the punishment of a nation does not come, as does that of 
an individual, during the lifetime of any one, but during 
the lifetime of the whole nation. The period is prolonged. 
For drunkenness cannot be produced in a nation, as in an 
individual, to-day or to-morrow. It takes a longer time to 
make a nation drunk than it does to make a man drunk. 
A long process must be gone through before a nation can 
be debauched. The space of some generations is required 
for that. It is not until an evil habit is established that 
the penalty begins to inure. And so in respect to national 
dishonesty, a nation is not made dishonest, as a man is, in 
a day. A hundred men may become dishonest, and they 
may be steadily infecting a hundred others with dis- 
honesty; and these may spread their desolating principles 
to a whole generation; but it takes a great while before so 
large a life as that of a nation, with its myriad individuals, 
acting and counteracting, becomes so corrupted as to be- 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. l^2> 

gin to reap the fruits of the great law of reward and of 
punishment. 

As a nation is complex, as it is made up of successive 
men, as it requires long periods for the evolution of any- 
thing, good or bad, the reward or the penalty will not be 
immediate. The good or the evil comes to a nation ac- 
cording to its periods of life, just as it does to an individ- 
ual. When the time comes, the remuneration comes to the 
nation, just as certainly as it does to the individual, al- 
though it takes a longer time to move, because there is so 
much more of national life than of individual life, and 
because the adjusting processes require so much more 
space and time in the life of a nation than in the life of 
an individual. 

A nation, like an individual, is held to responsibility for 
its obedience to physical laws. The laws that relate to an 
individual man's body, and that vindicate themselves in 
the case of an individual, also relate to the physical condi- 
tion of a race or a nation. A nation is held to responsi- 
bility for the violation or observance of social laws, or 
laws of intelligence, of industry, of frugality, of morals, of 
piety. It takes longer to make a nation accountable than 
an individual. But in its longer period a nation is held 
accountable for just exactly the same things that an indi- 
vidual is. For a million men have no right, because they 
are a million, to do what each individual one of them has 
no right to do, against a natural law. 

The observance or violation of moral principles in civil 
affairs is, if possible, even more signally rewarded or pun- 
ished in national life than in individual life. Honor, 
truth, justice, fairness, fidelity to obligation, moderation 
of desire, magnanimity, — these are more in a nation than 
in an individual. They are, therefore, more obviously re- 
warded in a nation than in an individual, and their oppo- 
sites more obviously punished. If this be so, nowhere so 
much in the world as in our land ought Christian citizens 
to be taught to consider the facts and principles that bear 
on national life, as well as those bearing on their own indi- 
vidual life. 



364 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

You are a part of a family, and you know that the wel- 
fare of that family concerns your individual welfa're. You 
are a part of the city or town where you live, and I need 
not say to you that you have your dividend of the public 
welfare, good or bad. You are members of the great civil 
society, you are members of the body politic of this nation; 
and while the welfare of the nation is made up in part of 
what you contribute to it, your welfare is in part made up 
of the nation itself. And no Christian minister that under- 
stands his duty in America can fail to indoctrinate his 
people in respect to their Christian duties as citizens. 
Though as Christians you examine your own hearts and your 
own consciences, though as Christian communicants you 
strive to cast out evil thoughts and desires from your mind, 
that does not fulfill your duty. You are bound, as a part 
of your fealty to Christ, to think also of national character, 
of national morals, and of national welfare. And as we 
have come to a time in which, in the most signal manner, 
God is making to appear his great retributive government 
of nations, I propose to mark out some of those features 
of Divine government that are now displaying themselves 
toward this nation, and in our affairs. 

If it is possible for a nation to sin, it must be when it 
has been led systematically to violate all the natural rights 
of a whole race or people; and American slavery, by the very 
definition of our jurists, is the deprivation of men of every 
natural right. For the American doctrine of slavery is no 
analogue or derivative of the Hebrew or any mild form of 
slavery. It is the extremest and worst form of the Roman 
doctrine of slavery; the harshest that the world has ever 
seen. It is a dehumanizing of men. It is the deliberate 
taking of men, and putting them in the place of cattle or 
chattels, and violating every one of their natural rights. 
Now, if this was done by an individual, we might suppose 
that that individual, in due time, would be punished. If 
it was done by a small community, we might suppose that 
that community would be punished. And if there is a 
moral government, if God is just, and if he rewards or 
punishes nations in this world, it is not possible for a na- 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 365 

tion systematically to violate every natural right of four 
millions of people, and go unpunished. If that can be 
done, — if a nation can deny every single principle of the 
Decalogue, and every moral canon, as applied to a whole 
people, from generation to generation, and God take no 
account of it, — then I do not blame men for saying that 
there is no God. I do not stand here to say that if the Bible 
does not condemn slavery, I will throw the Bible away. I 
make no such extravagant declaration as that. There are 
reasons why you cannot throw the Bible away. It clings 
to you; it is a part of your life; it is woven into your 
memory of father and mother, and of your childhood; and 
you cannot, throw it away. But this I do say: that if you 
teach that a nation of thirty millions of men may, by their 
organic laws, systematically violate the natural rights of 
four millions of men for twenty-five years, for fifty years, 
for seventy-five years, for a hundred years, and no sort of 
retribution follow, then do not blame men for saying that 
in that case there is no moral government over the affairs 
of this world. 

Suppose a man could drink a quart of whisky before 
breakfast, another quart before dinner, and another before 
supper, but never reel, and do it for forty years, for sixty 
years, and never be drunk, what headway should I make 
with young men in impressing upon their minds the dan- 
gers of drinking whisky? It would not be dangerous if it 
did not make men drunk. And if men can perpetrate 
every violation of natural law upon a whole race, from gen- 
eration to generation, and no penalty follow, then there is 
no testimony of God against such wickedness,- — indeed, it 
is not wicked. 

On the other hand, if they do it, and every step of doing 
is marked either by the intimation of penalty or the actual 
disclosure of it, and if that penalty is graded so that you 
can trace it from step to step, and so that he that is blind 
can feel it, if he cannot see it, then there is no casuistry 
about slavery, or about Scripture or textual authority 
against slavery. Then no man can get rid of the doctrine 
of God's judgment against slavery, and that there is a 



366 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

moral government which makes it penal to violate the 
rights of men. 

Let us look at it a little in this light, and see if there is 
any testimony, under God's great moral government, on 
the subject of the sinfulness of slavery. 

I. There is no right more universal, and more sacred, be- 
cause lying so near to the root of existence, than the right 
of men to their own labor. It is primal. But the very first 
step of slavery is to deny that right. There are four mill- 
ions of men, women, and children, to-day, to whom is 
denied the right to their own labor, — the right to direct it 
or to have the fruits of it. Now you may reason as cun- 
ningly as you please, and tell me that it is better that it 
should be so, and that the slaves are better off where they 
are, and I will point to every State where slavery has de- 
nied to the slave the right to his own labor, and will show 
that in that very spot God has blighted and cursed the soil. 
Every Slave State that has had exacted and enforced labor 
has itself felt the blight and curse of slavery in its agricul- 
ture. What is the land in Virginia worth to-day? It is 
worn out and abandoned. If it were not for slave-breeding, 
old slave-tilled Virginia would not now be a Slave State. 
It is not on account of her tobacco, it is not on account of 
her cereals, it is because Virginians sell their own blood in 
the market, that she is a Slave State. It is only by doing 
that, that she can make profit on slaves now. Her agricul- 
ture is killed. Her soil is wasted. You may track slavery 
through North Carolina, through South Carolina, through 
Georgia, through Alabama, through Mississippi, through 
Louisiana; and I do not tell any secret, or state that which 
any man doubts, when I say that the agriculture of slavery 
is an exhausting agriculture, and that it wears out every 
part of the country that it touches. The work of the slave 
carries the punishment of the master. The master takes 
away his right to his labor, and the slave turns round and 
says, "I curse the soil." The soil is cursed, and it is a wit- 
ness of God. 

2. Slavery violates the social and family rights of men. 
For the law of slavery is that every man in slavery is his 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 3^7 

master's, and not his own. Of course, therefore, every 
woman follows the same law. And there is no such a thing 
as the right of marriage. There is a form of marriage 
which is observed with more or less decency under differ- 
ent circumstances; but there is neither the doctrine nor 
the impression, throughout slavery, that, when a man is 
once married, his wife is sacred to him forever. Sale is 
divorce; and the general law is that, when a man is sold 
ten miles from the plantation where his wife is owned, he 
is frefe to take another. The Church never thinks of dis- 
ciplining him if he does, nor the woman if she takes a sec- 
ond or a third husband. 

Now if anything is fundamental in this world, it is mar- 
riage; but if anything is violated systematically and 
inevitably, it is the right of marriage in men that do not 
own either their wives or their children in any way what- 
ever. Is there any testimony on this subject? Has God 
visited such a monstrous violation of natural and moral 
law with any punishment ? Yes, in destroying the sacred- 
ness of the family relation. The virtue of the family estate 
is sapped throughout the South. I know what I speak. It 
is not a matter into which you can go in detail; but the 
great sanctities and purities of wedded life are universally 
violated in the South. Talk about amalgamation as one 
of the hateful abolitionist doctrines ! Amalgamation is 
never unpopular until it has been made lawful; and then 
men hate it like perdition. But just so long as it is concu- 
binage, adultery, and fornication, it is the most popular 
doctrine in the whole South. And I know that the very 
foundation of the virtue of the young men throughout the 
South is perpetually sapped and undermined. I believe 
that nowhere are women more virtuous than there; and 
nowhere do they suffer more than there. And in God's 
great revealing day, when the anguish of wives' hearts 
and mothers' hearts, when all that they have been made to 
suffer by the contaminations which they have seen brought 
by slavery into their families, shall be revealed, O how 
dreadful will then appear God's witness and punishment 
of that vile system ! Those who take away from the slave 



368 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the fundamental right of matrimony, and of the family, are 
punished by the undermining of the virtue and purity of 
their own households. 

3. Slavery makes ignorance indispensable to the slave; 
because where there is knowledge, every faculty is a w^heel 
set in motion. The more complex the machinery of a 
man's mind is, the more needful it is to have a skillful en- 
gineer to manage and keep it in repair, and the more fuel 
it requires to run it; while the less complex it is, the nearer 
the man is to an animal, the easier it is to manage it and keep 
it in repair, and supply its wants. As long as man lives 
only in bone and muscle, he asks nothing but pork and 
corn-meal. As long as he is an ox, he chews ox-fodder. 
When he becomes a man, he eats man's food. And the 
difference between a slave and a man is the difference be- 
tween fodder and food. The moment you give a man a 
heart, he must have something for his heart; the moment 
you give him imagination, he must have some opportunity, 
some scope, some leisure, for his imagination; the moment 
you give him reason, he must have food for his reason; and 
as you augment a man in civilization, and make more and 
more of him, there must be a larger space, more room, for 
him. And so, when you give slaves intelligence, you make 
them so voluminous that a man cannot afford to provide 
for a hundred of them; and it is not safe to let them provide 
for themselves. The only way, therefore, to make slavery 
profitable, is to keep the slave ignorant. 

Now, is there no punishment for this wrong? If a man 
shuts the door of knowledge against his fellowman, is 
there no testimony of God against it? Is it no sin to rob 
manhood of knowledge? Is it no crime to take from man 
the liberty of being what God made him to be ? I hold 
that there is no other crime in the calendar to be compared 
with that. The man that robs a bank in New York commits a 
slight offense compared with that which he commits who 
robs a human being of the right to open his own mind be- 
fore God and man. And what is the punishment of that? 
The white man says to the slave, " You shall not know 
anything"; and the slave says to the white man, " Massa, 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 369 

you shall not know anything," — and he does not ! For the 
great mass of the white men of the South are profoundly ig- 
norant, and must remain ignorant, for the reason that you 
cannot have schools where there is a legalized system of 
ignorance. Where there is a system of enforced ignorance 
that deprives four millions of men of knowledge, you can- 
not also have a system of forced intelligence that shall 
diffuse knowledge among the remainder of the population, 
as the free schools of the North do among our population. 
The necessity of keeping the slave ignorant is the necessity 
of keeping the major part of the white people at the South 
ignorant. They are ignorant, and ignorant they will re- 
main while slavery remains; and God bears witness that 
he punishes this exclusion of knowledge from the slave. 

4. Slavery, taking away from man his rights, and degrad- 
ing him to be a thing of bargain and sale, avenges itself by 
making human life unsacred wherever slavery prevails. It 
begins by lowering the idea of manhood, and by making 
slave-life of no account, except for purposes of traffic. 
The punishment is that, in lowering the idea of manhood, 
and making life of no account in respect to four millions 
of men, it does the same things in respect to all mankind. 
And where is life so cheap, and where can a man be killed 
so easily and with so little disturbance of society, as in the 
Southern States ? And where slavery is the most rancorous, 
not only are duels, riots, assassinations, and bloody broils 
most frequent, but the whole of social life is low and bar- 
barous. And it is reasonable that life should be cheaper 
there than in civilized communities, because it is a great 
deal more to kill a virtuous, noble-minded man than a bar- 
barian ! There are some men such that if you kill one, you 
kill a thousand men; and there are some men of whom 
you might kill a thousand, and then not kill more than 
one. Influences proceed together by elective affinities; 
and thus a system that for the sake of slavery lowers the 
doctrine of manhood, lowers it about all men. Thus it 
punishes itself, and carries the penalty in its own nature. 

5. Yet more terrible is another aspect. Slavery, while 
admitted to be an evil, and regretted, might consist with 



37° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

correct civil ideas. It did in the beginning. Till within 
my remembrance, Christian men and statesmen in the 
South admitted that slavery was an evil, deprecated its ex- 
istence, and hoped for its decline and its extinction; and it 
was quite compatible with the existence of slavery that 
these men held right doctrines about men and government. 
But a change came, and the doctrine that now exists 
throughout the South on the subject of slavery is, that 
slavery is right, and that it is the right of the strong and 
the intelligent to take away from the weak and the igno- 
rant every civil right, and every personal right, and to 
subject and subdue them to their own will. That is now 
claimed by the South as a right. Well, what has been the 
penalty ? The assumption of the right to denude four 
millions of men of their rights has avenged itself by rolling 
back and corrupting every political theory and every polit- 
ical idea throughout the South. Every thinking man 
there has been corrupted to the core by this doctrine of 
slavery. And I aver without fear of contradiction, that 
the South have set themselves free from democracy and 
republicanism. They are neither republican nor demo- 
cratic. They are aristocratic, and are verging close upon 
monarchy. And slavery has punished them. As an in- 
strument in the hand of God, it has been turned upon 
them for their punishment. They have been punished as 
with a whip of scorpions. They have held a doctrine that 
justified them in taking every civil and every natural right 
away from their fellow-men, and God has punished them 
by turning them back to the barbaric periods, and driving 
them upon the waste and now abandoned doctrines of 
Europe. And the States of the South, — you know where 
they are. They are four hundred years back of where you 
stand, and they are going back. They have already got 
the other side of the Reformation, and they are on the 
way to the Red Sea, and God will thrust them in ! 

6. As with States, so with the Federal government. I 
might cite innumerable instances of penalty that have ac- 
companied the opening progress of this system of slavery. 
The Federal government has tolerated slavery, and it has 



NATIOXAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 371 

experienced, and is experiencing, punishment therefor. In 
the inception of this government, when independent States 
were being persuaded to coalesce, and to form one great 
nation, the dread of weakness was so great that men con- 
sented to act by sight, and not by faith. 

A cooper goes to work to make a wine-cask. He pre- 
pares the staves, and begins to set them up. This one is 
sound, and he sets it up; that one is sound, and he sets 
that up; he runs around the circle, till he comes to the 
last three or four staves, when he takes them up, and finds 
that they are worm-eaten and bored in every direction. 
He says, " I am afraid that I shall not make my barrel if I 
do not put them in: I know they are poor, that the wine 
will leak out, and that I shall have a terrible time to save 
it, but I must make up my barrel, and these are all that I 
have." So he puts them in, and drives down the hoops; 
and when the wine is put in it runs out, and then follows 
a system of tinkering, and driving in a chip here, and a 
sliver there. But in spite of all that he can do, the wine 
leaks away. And, after infinite trials and vexations, he 
finds that the wine is all gone, and that the barrel is good 
for nothing. What should he have done? He should have 
thrown out those worm-eaten staves, and made the barrel 
smaller. 

Now, because they were afraid that South Carolina — 
that rottenest of rotten staves — would not come in, the 
framers of our government admitted slavery, the worm- 
eaten devastation of this country. Suppose they had said, 
" We will have a Union and have freedom in it, and only 
those that consent to the exclusion of slavery shall be ad- 
mitted," — suppose they had said this, and made their 
barrel smaller, and made it sound, is there any doubt as to 
what the issue would have been ? But they were so afraid 
of weakness that they wished to make the barrel large, and 
they put in worm-eaten staves; and the result is that there 
has not been one single weakness in this government that 
has not followed directly from the mischief of slavery in 
it. We were a homogeneous people. We had opportuni- 
ties on this continent, and elements of prosperity, such as 



372 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

no nation ever possessed. There never was launched such 
a people on such a sphere as this. And the great and only 
cause of weakness and trouble in the Federal government 
has been slavery. And the agitations and disturbances 
and sufferings through which we have passed have been so 
many penalties and punishments which God has infixed 
upon the wickedness that included slavery in this govern- 
ment. We have had a head full of sound teeth. Slavery 
is the only tooth that has ached. Every other one has 
been true to its function. 

It has been said that resistance to slavery has been the 
cause of all our national troubles. That is as if a wise 
physiologist should say that the resistance of the principle 
of health in a man's body to disease was the cause of 
fevers, and that the way not to have fevers was to lie down 
and let the disease go through its course. Yes, there has 
been conscience enough to make resistance, thank God. 
If it had not been for that, we should have been corrupted 
through and through, and the very marrow would have 
been rotten before this time. 

For a period of fifty years, on pleas of national peace, 
for the sake of harmony and prosperity, the loyal and free 
States have declined to maintain the policy of liberty, and 
have permitted slavery to augment from an acknowledged 
evil to a dominant power, — from a thing permitted to a 
despotic influence. We have, for a period of fifty years, 
had a race of statesmen, bribed and corrupted, who have 
perpetually said, " Let us not disturb the prosperity of this 
great nation." O, how they have laughed at and scorned 
the men that sounded out God's denunciations and woes 
against such monstrous iniquity ! and how they have ut- 
tered in the ears of a credulous public the declaration, 
" This nation, this Government, this Constitution, — are 
they not more precious than the isinsoi the abolitionists?" 
In other words, when God's law demanded justice, they 
have said, " Commercial prosperity is more than God's 
law." When once a man, that never, I fear, will say so 
good a thing again, said that there was a higher law than 
legislators ever passed, the whole nation — not excepting 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 373 

ministers in pulpits, who have, I hope, learned better 
things by this time — derided the idea that there could be a 
higher law. And such has been the state of things in the 
midst of which politicians in this country have been 
trained, and which has brought the original principles of 
justice and equity to contempt. The ruling spirit of the 
nation has been a commercial spirit, and that in its lowest 
forms. 

Has there been any penalty? What has been the result 
of the last fifty years of peace-making? Go to Sharps- 
burg; go into Virginia, where battles have been fought; 
go along the swamps of the Chickahominy; go through 
Kentucky and Missouri, where war like a sirocco has des- 
olated everything; go where the land rocks and reels with 
earthquakes and convulsions, — and read the lessons of 
peace that we have been taught. For in these days we are 
reaping what we have sowed. These things are the fruit 
of the seed that we have planted. You would have peace, 
and you see what you have got. If you had stood up be- 
fore, manfully, and listened betimes, and resisted the evil 
that threatened the very life of the nation, you would not 
have come to this pass. You were warned, you were ex- 
horted, innumerable witnesses foretold what the result 
must be, and behold it has come upon you ! 

I beg you still further to take notice of some remarkable 
facts. 

If there is any State in this Union that has suffered more 
severely than another, it is Virginia. If there is any State 
that has sinned against light and knowledge, it is Virginia. 
She knew better; and she has been desolated, skinned, 
peeled, stripped bare. Famine now sweeps with outspread 
wings over her plains, and desolation grins in her valleys, 
that a few months ago were as lovely as paradise. 

Virginia was dragooned out of the nation. When the 
convention was elected, it was elected by the people in 
favor of the Union. They assembled in Richmond. 
There was a conspiracy of slave-traders, who, in connec- 
tion with some desperate politicians, instituted a terrorism; 
and that convention was dragooned to a secret vote that 



374 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

took the State out of the Union, by that corruptest, guilt- 
iest, and most accursed class of men, slave-traders, who 
are hated of men, of God, and the devil. And that State, 
which was the keystone of the arch, and which permitted 
herself to fall out, has had the most terrible punishment. 
Is there no lesson in that ? Is that an accidental fact ? 

Consider, again, the strange part that has been played 
in this conflict by Southern women. A woman always 
goes with her whole heart, whether for the good or for the 
bad. Women are the best and the worst things that God 
ever made ! And they have been true to their nature in 
this conflict. Southern men have been tame and cool in 
comparison with the fury of Southern women. Now, ad- 
mit that they were blinded. A man that steps off from a 
precipice is not saved because he is blindfolded. A man 
that walks in fire is not saved because he thought it was 
water. I suppose that of the male population of the South 
between the ages of fifteen and fifty, a majority will be 
utterly cut off before this war ends. To a great extent, 
Southern households are to be stripped of those that are 
their heads, and the South is to be a realm in which 
woman shall be deprived of her natural protector, and 
bear unutterable woes of poverty and sorrow and murder 
and rapine. She has taken such an unfortunate position 
in this war, for slavery, and she has sinned against such 
great light, that God is bringing down upon her condign 
punishment. 

We, too, are suffering in the North, and in the same way 
that we ought to. I accept the punishment. It is meas- 
ured with an even hand all over the country. Every man 
that should have voted right, and did not, is having, or is 
yet to have, a part in the sufferings caused by this strug- ' 
gle. Every State that, for the sake of its manufactories, 
has refused to do the right thing, has suffered, and shall 
suffer. For I call you more especially to take notice, that 
the North has suffered to the extent to which she has 
winked at slavery for the sake of commerce. Why is it 
that the State of Connecticut — my State — the State in which 
I was born and bred, which I love with an unfaltering love, 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 375 

and of which I have been so often ashamed — has been so 
servile, so radically Democratic, in the sense of that De- 
mocracy which means pandering to slavery, — why is it, but 
that she has established petty manufactories along the 
shore, and that her great market has been South? Why 
has the manufacturing North been so largely pro-slavery? 
Why has the policy of freedom been so often betrayed and 
paralyzed by the merchants of New York and Philadelphia, 
and Boston and Pittsburgh ? Commerce has bribed them. 
And what is the result? You have been making money 
out of slavery. A part of my support comes out of slavery. 
I do not deny this. I know that I eat sugar and wear cot- 
ton that have been produced by the unrequited labor of 
slaves. I know that this evil of slavery has gone through 
every fiber of the whole North. And while I blame the 
North, I take part of the blame on my own head. I put 
part of it on your head. I distribute it to every State. 
I am not making complaint against the South distinctively, 
but against the Nation. And by the time you have paid 
two thousand million dollars of taxes, and have but just 
begun, I think that the Lord will have got back pretty 
much all that the North has made out of slavery ! God is a 
great tax-gatherer: he is out now on that errand; and he 
will have a prosperous time ! 

I call you still further to take notice, that every nation 
and people on the globe that has had any political or pecu- 
niary connection with this monstrous evil is being made to 
suffer. God is pouring out the vial of his wrath; and bear- 
ing witness, tremendous witness, by war, against slavery, 
and against the cruel wickedness of men that perpetuate 
it. The South suffers, the North suffers, and, next to this 
nation, England suffers, because, next to this nation, she is 
guilty. England ? why, there is not a better-tongued peo- 
ple in the world. England ? I honor her old history; I 
honor her struggles for liberty; I honor her stalwart valor 
in the present day. And yet the commercial classes in 
England have thriven, and made their wealth and built 
their palaces, out of slave labor. And to-day there is 
mourning in the factories of England, there is famine in 



376 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

her streets, and the commercial classes are demanding that 
the ports of the South shall be opened. And now that 
government, which has already winked at wickedness on 
account of the necessity of obtaining cotton, is yielding, 
and is considering whether it is not necessary for her to 
commit another monstrous wickedness. God punishes 
England, because England has had to do with slavery. 
And he is punishing France. France suffers less, but 
France is suffering. Find me a nation whose welfare has 
depended on cotton or sugar, and I will find you a nation 
that is suffering in consequence of this war. 

Are these facts accidental ? The condition of the South, 
of the North, and of foreign countries, in their relations to 
the war, — are these accidental ? Is there any such thing 
as a divine witness ? Are there any such things as indica- 
tions of a moral government, and of punishments accruing 
from the transgression of moral laws ? 

What then, I ask, in conclusion, is infidelity in our day? 
It is refusing to hear God's voice, and to believe God's tes- 
timony in his providence. There are plenty of men who 
believe in Genesis, and Chronicles, and the Psalms, and 
Isaiah, and Daniel, and Ezekiel, and Matthew, and the 
other Evangelists, and the rest of the New Testament, 
clear down to the Apocalypse; there are plenty of men 
who believe in the letter of Scripture; and there are plenty 
of men who believe everything that God said four thou- 
sand years ago; but the Lord God Almighty is walking 
forth at this time in clouds and thunder such as never 
rocked Sinai. His voice is in all the land, and in all the 
earth, and those men that refuse to hear God in his own 
time, and in the language of the events that are taking 
place, are infidels. And the infidelity is greater in your 
case than it could be in the case of any other people; be- 
cause to believe in slavery, to refuse to believe in liberty, 
and to be unwilling to believe that God rewards liberty and 
punishes slavery, against your education, against your his- 
toric ideas, against all the canons of your political struct- 
ure, against the natural sympathies of the heart, — that is a 
monstrous infidelity. No man can be such an infidel by 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 377 

disbelieving the Bible as you can by standing and looking 
upon the current events of this age, and refusing to be- 
lieve that God is bearing witness against oppression and 
in favor of liberty. Take care ! You are in more danger 
on that point, just now, than on any other. Because 
things are coming to a crisis. We are about to move in 
gigantic force in one way or the other; and it is necessary 
that we should fall back on some great principle. Hence- 
forth, let us refuse to take guidance and direction from 
the counsels of cunning men or weaving politicians. It is 
time for us to fall back from the counsels of men, and 
strike some great immutable principle of God. 

What, then, is to be our policy for the future? What 
are we to do ? One class of men will say, " The remedy 
for all these evils is to gather together about twenty seces- 
sionists, and about twenty abolitionists, and hang them ! " 
But I will tell you what hanging abolitionists will do. It 
will do just exactly what would be done if, when a terrible 
disease had broken out on a ship, the crew should kick the 
doctors overboard, and the medicine after them. The 
disease would stay on board, and only the cure would go 
overboard. You may rage as much as you please, but the 
men who labor to bring back the voices of the founders of 
this Union; the men whose faith touches the original prin- 
ciples of God's Word; the men that are in sympathy with 
Luther; the men that breathe the breath that fanned the 
flame of the Revolution; the men that walk in the spirit of 
the old Puritans; the men that are like the first framers of 
this model republic, — they are the men, if there be any 
medicine yet, by whose hand God will send a cure. Hang 
them ? that was the medicine that the Jews had when 
they crucified Christ. The Lord of glory was put upon an 
ignominious tree, and they thought that they would have 
peace in Jerusalem ! And where is Jerusalem ? Where are 
the Jews ? They are a by-word and a hissing to the earth. 
And you, the children of men that came here for liberty; 
you, that heard only the doctrines of liberty from your 
mother's lips, and drank it with her milk; you, in whose 
make every thread and every fiber was spun from the 



378 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

golden fleece of liberty, — can you stand in any doubt as to 
what the remedy is for such times as these ? It is to repent 
of past days, to break away from the past and to call God 
to witness that in time to come we will consecrate, individ- 
ually and nationally, every energy to repair the mischief 
of slavery, to do it away utterly, and to establish the reign 
of universal liberty. That is the path of safety. And 
blessed be God, he has sent a porter. He has opened the 
door by the hand of the President. He has lifted the silver 
trumpet of liberty, and the blast is blown that rolls 
through the forest, and goes along the mountain-side, and 
spreads wide over the prairies. It is known on the hither 
ocean, and on the thither; and the waves of the Pacific, and 
the waves of the Atlantic, lift themselves up, and sound 
together notes of gladness because that policy is enun- 
ciated which. cannot be taken back. As long as it was a 
question whether the President meant to declare emanci- 
pation, as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy of 
the United States, as a military necessity, — as long as 
there was any doubt on this subject, the North was in 
danger of being divided into two parties, one attempting 
to make him proclaim liberty, and the other attempting to 
make him stand up for slavery. He has taken his choice 
between them. And there can be but two parties in the 
North, one of which shall go for liberty, the government, 
and the President, and the other for the South, for treach- 
ery, and for slavery. The foundation of all opposition is 
knocked out. 

I know it is said that the President is not the govern- 
ment; that the Constitution is the government. What ! a 
sheepish parchment a government ! I should think it was 
a very fit one for some such men as I often see and hear ! 
What is a government in our country ? It is a body of liv- 
ing men, ordained by the people, who administer public 
affairs according to the laws that are written in the Consti- 
tution and the statute-books. The government consists of 
living men that are administering, in a certain method, the 
affairs of the nation. It is not a dry writing, or a book. 
President Lincoln and his Cabinet, the heads of the execu- 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 379 

tive departments, are the government. And men must take 
their choice whether they will go against their government 
or go with it. Mouthing traitors will pretend to go with 
the government while they are undermining it, and honest 
men will go with it, — and you know that the honest men 
in the North are yet a large majority. I thank God that 
the lines are drawn. There is nothing so demoralizing as 
equivocal neutrality, and nothing so bad. And since the 
President has taken ground, since the administration and 
government are now fixed on the side of liberty, the old 
original wisdom of our Constitution, and the doctrine of 
our fathers, we are going to have the Union as it never 
was, but as it was meant to be. The Union as it was 
meant to be, and not the Union as it was, is to be our doc- 
trine; because the Union as it was, was a monstrous out- 
rage on your rights, and on mine. The Union as it was 
guaranteed me the right of speech, to be paid for by my 
life in Virginia and Carolina and Georgia and Alabama 
and Mississippi and Louisiana and Arkansas and Missouri. 
I could not have gone to either of those States and spoken the 
words that I have spoken to-night without praising God to- 
morrow morning in another world. Am I to celebrate the 
Union as it was, which was a practical violation of the great 
canons of the Constitution, of the great principles of the 
Bills of Rights, and of the great doctrines of the Declara- 
tion of Independence ? Slavery had corrupted it, and made 
it to be practically an abominable thing in many of its 
usages. But the Union as it was to be, the Union as it was 
in the intent of the framers of it, — let that come back; and, 
so far as it is twisted out of shape, let the twists be taken 
out, so that it shall stand just exactly plumb to the line of 
the Constitution. Then we shall have the Union that is to 
be, and the Union that we want. 

And now, my Christian friends, if the whole Church of 
the Christian North and the loyal North, if the ministers 
and the members of the churches, and all that are religiously 
inclined throughout the North, will be pleased to make 
this a matter of religious conviction, and if they will as- 
sume that God has come to judgment with this nation, and 



380 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

will for their future policy ask, not, " Mr. Seward, what wilt 
thou have me to do ? " nor, " Mr. Seymour, what wilt thou 
have me to do?" nor even, "Mr. Lincoln, what wilt thou 
have me to do ? " but, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to 
do?" — if the Christian public of the North will settle their 
duty in the light of eternity, and according to the princi- 
ples of God's Word, and if they will take the slave and 
bear him to Calvary, and lay him down under the cross of 
Him that gave his life for the poor and the wretched, and 
if then, as the sacred drops fall from the w^ounded side 
upon his beaten and bruised body, kneeling down, they 
will say, "Jesus, what wilt thou have me to do for this in- 
jured and oppressed one ?" and will settle it there, and un- 
der that intiuence, I have no fear. 

We shall see struggles, and go through deep and bitter 
trials yet; but the future is bright. For where Christ sits 
is daylight and morning. And if the v^hole Christian pub- 
lic of the North set their faces toward God, and move 
toward him, they will move away from night, and toward 
the day, — a day that, when it shall once have arisen on this 
continent, shall know no setting, — a day of Christian lib- 
erty, — the harbinger of universal freedom to a world regen- 
erated. God grant it ! 

And as for me, I am determined, by that same help that 
has been vouchsafed to me from the beginning, to preach 
a Gospel of liberty among you, and to bear witness for lib- 
erty, as founded in religion, to all this nation. I will not 
be intimidated. I shall not be persuaded. Come weal or 
come woe, — whether we are defeated and cast back again, 
or whether we go forward immediately to the prosperity of 
an ascertained and settled liberty, — as long as I have life 
and health, and strength and breath, I will use them first 
and last, and chiefly and only, for the enunciation of that 
Gospel which brings release to the captive, and liberty to 
man. There is no power even in hell, though you bring its 
legions and its monstrosities upon the earth, that for one 
single moment will hinder or turn back this testimony that 
God made man to be free. I will preach it for the sewing- 
woman; I will preach it for the poor day laborer; I will 



NATIONAL INJUSTICE AND PENALTY. 381 

preach it for the white man and for the black man; I will 
preach it for all in this land; I will preach it for the oppressed 
of other lands, — for the Irishman, for the Dane, for the En- 
glishman, for the Frenchman, for the struggling Italian, 
and for the Hungarian; I will preach it for every man. For 
God hath made all nations of one blood, and to dwell to- 
gether. I own the brotherhood. I accept every man as 
my brother, inheriting my right. And as long as I claim 
for myself liberty, I will assert it for other men, I will live 
for it, and I will die for it. 

I see that this is not my own individual inspiration. I am 
moved to this because it is in the public heart, because it is 
the public sentiment of States and communities. I am 
but the mouthpiece of millions of men; and I say to those 
that meditate treachery and tyranny, Beware ! God has 
come to judgment, but he has come to a judgment by 
which he will purify his people, and make them a peculiar 
people, zealous of good works. We shall see a glorious 
Union. We shall see a restored Constitution. We shall 
see a liberty in whose bright day Georgia and Massachu- 
setts shall shake hands that never shall be separated again. 
There is love yet to be raked open. Now there is fierce- 
ness of hatred; but there shall come concord, fellowship, 
and union, that no foreign influence can break, and no 
home trouble shall ever mar again. We shall live to see 
a better day. 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF 
GOVERNMENT/ 



" That the hypocrite reign not, lest the people be ensnared." — Job 
xxxiv. 30. 

The whole context from the seventeeth verse is worthy 
of reading. 

" Shall even he that hateth right govern ? and wilt thou con- 
demn him that is most just? Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art 
wicked? and to princes, Ye are ungodly? How much less to 
him that accepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the 
rich more than the poor? for they all are the work of his hands." 

God is the greatest democrat in the universe. He does 
not regard ranks, nor conditions, nor degrees; and he says 
that the highest rich man is just like the lowest poor 
man, and that a king is no better than the humblest of his 
subjects. They are all alike before the throne of God. 
As you go toward heaven, you go toward the true divine 
democracy. 

" In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled 
at midnight, and pass away : and the mighty shall be taken away 
without hand. For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he 
seeth all his goings. There is no darkness nor shadow of death, 
where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves " — from God. 
" For he will not lay upon man more than right, that he should 
enter into judgment with God. He shall break in pieces mighty 
men without number, and set others in their stead. Therefore 
he knoweth their works, and he overturneth them in the night, 
so that they are destroyed. He striketh them as wicked men in 
the open sight of others ; because they turned back from him, 
and would not consider any of his ways : so that they cause the 
cry of the poor to come unto him, and he heareth the cry of the 
afflicted. When he giveth quietness, who then can make trouble ? 

* November 22, 1S62. 



THE GROUXD AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 383 

and when he hideth his face, who then can behold him ? whether 
it be done against a nation, or against a man only : that the hypo- 
crite reign not, lest the people be ensnared." 

It is afifirmed that Job was written at some period be- 
tween Abraham and Moses. It is the oldest portion, or at 
least one of the oldest portions, of the sacred writings. 
And yet, old as it is, the world-long controversy whether 
God governed the world by a moral law, with rewards 
and penalties, had begun when it was written. The whole 
passage read is a fine assertion of the fact of Divine gov- 
ernment, and with shades and applications that would 
seem to make it the transcript of God's procedure in our 
own time. 

The fault of all expectations and arguments as to the 
existence of a moral government over human affairs is apt 
to be that men seek for the evidences of a moral govern- 
ment where these are not most evident. For the Divine 
government is distributed through many different depart- 
ments of life. A part of it appears in the individual. A 
part of it follows him into the family. A part of it be- 
longs to his commercial, and a part of it to his civil life. 
And we are to gather the results of any moral course, not 
alone in an individual fate, but in the collective fate of all 
the individuals represented in the household, in their bus- 
iness, and in their civil estate. And the results of God's 
moral administration appear partly in the individual, 
partly in the household, partly in the affairs of commerce, 
and partly in national histories. But man's life, taken 
comprehensively, bears witness to nothing, if not to the 
moral government of God, which rewards right conduct, 
truth, honor, virtue, manhood, and duty, and punishes the 
reverse. And history has been written in vain, if history 
has not taught this. But it has not been written in vain, 
and it does teach this. A man in civil government is just 
as much a subject of the divine moral government as a 
man in his individual relations. 

Civil governments are said to be of God. All govern- 
ment is ordained of God; and civil governments are so, 
not as by revelation and ordination, but because the nature 



384 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

of man necessitates government. God did not create man, 
and then command a government over him, but he created 
man with a necessity and instinct of government, and then 
left that instinct and necessity to develop themselves. God 
made men to need clothes, but he never cut out a pattern 
for them to make their clothes by. He left them to choose 
their own raiment. God made appetite, but he never 
made a bill of fare. He left men to pick out their own 
food. God made man's necessity for government, and 
then let him alone, and that necessity of government 
wrought out civil governments. 

There has been a law, also, in these; for governments 
are not accidental. Governments are always the legiti- 
mate outworkings of the condition of those governed; 
and there cannot, for any prolonged period, be a govern- 
ment that is not, in the nature of things, adapted to those 
under it. If there is an absolute monarchy, it is an indi- 
cation that there is a state of the people that requires an 
absolute monarchy. If there is an intermediate, or aristo- 
cratic government, it is an indication that the state of the 
people is such as to necessitate that government. If there 
is a continuous and strong republican government, or self- 
government in any form, it is because there was a condi- 
tion of the people that wrought it out. For governments 
are not arbitrary. They are the effect of which the moral 
state of the people is the cause. Therefore we are not to 
rail against any form of government, as if it were itself a 
monstrous wrong. Governments are shadows that na- 
tions and peoples themselves cast; and they usually meas- 
ure in some degree the proportions of the peoples or 
nations that cast them. 

The lowest conditions of men always induce strong gov- 
ernments; they always induce governments of force rather 
than of motive; and for the reason that men in an unde- 
veloped and ignorant state are unsusceptible of motive. 
They do not think much. Their moral sense is inchoate, 
and you cannot address many motives to it. That part of 
their life is superstitious rather than religious, and it leads 
to the introduction of superstitious motives into govern- 



THE GROUND AA'D FORMS OF GOVERNMEA'T. 385 

ment. And in proportion as men are in condition like an- 
imals, you must harness and whip them as you do animals. 
You cannot govern them in any other way. We act upon 
this principle in our households; for the little child, before 
it has learned to use its reason and its moral sense, is gov- 
erned through the skin. And just in proportion as it is 
redeemed from animalism, and carried up toward intelli- 
gence and moral sense, a moral and intellectual govern- 
ment is introduced in the place of a physical government. 
You cannot govern a child of four years as you can a man 
of forty, simply because those motives which influence the 
developed nature of the man have no effect on the unde- 
veloped nature of the child. And so it is in governments. 
While rneh are low and brutal and savage, while they have 
possession of but a part of themselves, it is not possible 
to govern them in any way except with reference to their 
condition. 

The middle state will result in government by orders 
and classes. It will emancipate such as are strong and in- 
telligent, and leave the ignorant yet under strong govern- 
ment. When all men are ignorant, you will have absolute 
monarchies; when a part are intelligent and the rest are 
ignorant, you will have aristocracies; and when the whole 
are intelligent, you will have democracies, or republican 
governments. One of these three is inevitable. The peo- 
ple determine what the government shall be. If they are 
brutal, there will be tyrannies; if they are partly civilized 
and partly uncivilized, there will be aristocracies; if they 
are wholly civilized, there will be democracies. Govern- 
ments necessitate themselves, and adapt themselves to the 
people. 

Let us look a little at this order of government as 
founded upon the character of the people. 

Strong governments belong to the undeveloped and 
weak. It is so of necessity, and it is so by right. If it is 
wrong to have monarchies when they are required, it is 
still more wrong to have people that can be governed by 
nothing but monarchies. So long as people are crude and 
undeveloped, you can govern them in no other way than 



386 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

by strong and compulsory means. There were attempts 
made early at self-governments but they all failed igno- 
miniously, for the reason that the people were not prepared 
to govern themselves. The Jewish nation has been called 
a commonwealth. That there were in its legislation ele- 
ments of a commonwealth, there can be no doubt; but in 
point of fact the government of the Jewish people never 
did amount to anything more than a strong government. 
It was either a government of chiefs over tribes, or a gov- 
ernment of priests, under the name of theocracy. And it 
was a strong government, whatever the form might be. 

Just as far as ignorance and passion and rudeness exist 
in a community, they impede self-government, or even 
make it impossible. And where the people are not pre- 
pared or qualified to govern themselves, absolute govern- 
ments are just as certain now as ever before. Government 
is not a thing to be chosen, except so far as necessity is 
itself choice. Adaptation is a kind of generic choice. It 
is supposed that we have outgrown monarchical govern- 
ments. We have been taught, since the days of the spell- 
ing-book and the old " Columbian Orator," that this nation 
could not be governed by a monarchy. It depends upon 
how ignorant and how wicked you are. Large portions of 
this nation cannot be governed by anything but a mon- 
archy now, and there is danger that ere long such will be 
the case with the whole nation unless there is a change. 
For as ignorance disappears, so disappear monarchies; and 
as ignorance comes back, so inevitably come back mon- 
archies. August laughs at the idea of March, and says, 
" We have no frost; we have warm nights and glowing 
days, and there shall be no more frosts." And September 
says it, only with a fainter voice. And October begins to 
feel pinching frosts. And as the days grow shorter, and 
the nights grow longer, and November and December 
come in, the reign of winter again ensues. And there is 
a January to every August, as there is an April to every 
January. And there are just such revolutions in the his- 
tory of the world. You can have Pharaohs again, if you 
want them, — though I pray God that there may be a Red 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 387 

Sea for every one of them ! You can have dynasties again 
through just letting the people become adapted to them 
by ignorance, by unvirtue, by a want of self-restraint, by 
pampered self-indulgence, or by pride growing out of 
monstrous prosperity. Every step toward declension from 
moral character is a written invitation for tyranny to come 
back, — and it never lingers long nor hesitates when invited. 

Whenever, from any cause, large portions of any com- 
munity become barbarous, they necessitate monarchies, and 
the prevailing governments must either grow strong, or 
fail entirely; for there can be no self-government except 
where there is virtue, intelligence, and moral worth. 

Strong governments, then, belong to the first conditions 
of the world, to the lowest states of human life; and they 
are not good as compared with better governments, but 
good as compared with nothing at all. 

The process of civilization, with all its manifold powers, 
acts first, of course, upon the strongest natures. In strong 
governments there will be, if they be at all good, a ten- 
dency to improve. This tendency usually shows itself first, 
not in masses, but in single instances; and when educating 
influences begin to bear upon a community, the most sus- 
ceptible are first affected; the men with the strongest 
minds, with the most intellection, with the richest natures, 
with the best parts, are earliest developed. The word 
aristocracy comes from the Greek, and signifies government 
by the best. And in the progress of the development of 
national life the first men that are educated, and that begin 
to have the power that comss from education, are by orig- 
inal endowment the best men, the most intellectual men. 
the men of the most brain and substance. 

The second result is that such men become incapable of 
enduring an arbitrary government. As long as men are 
ignorant, and deficient in will, they are incompetent to re- 
sist a strong government, and, like the masses around them, 
they submit to it; but as they begin to think, and have 
will-power, they begin to resist the government, and it 
slides off, and begins to distribute its power, and an aristoc- 
racy comes in as the first transition from an absolute gov- 



388 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ernment, so that there will be a monarch, with a class, as 
in England, or a class without a monarch, as in some of 
the ancient nations. Under such circumstances, the gov- 
ernment is called the government of the best men over the 
masses, or of the few over the many. And this is a nat- 
ural and inevitable transition state from strong govern- 
ment to self-government. It holds a middle place between 
a government over the people and a government from the 
people. It includes, in some degree, the elements of both. 
And the same reason that compels the crown to divide its 
power with the higher classes will go on steadily, compell- 
ing these higher classes to admit fresh sections into their 
upper circle. There is a tendency in governments to work 
toward the republican form. That is to say, where gov- 
ernments are wisely and efficiently administered, men more 
and more learn the art and acquire the capacity of govern- 
ing, and become themselves depositaries of governmental 
power. 

In all Europe there is a steady progress toward the last 
great form of civil government, — namely, republican gov- 
ernment, or government of the people by the people. I 
know it is said that the English government is the best 
government on the earth. Very likely it may be the best 
in the intermediate period; but it is not standing still in 
that period. If there is one thing more certain than an- 
other, it is that, as the popular element increases, that gov- 
ernment recedes from aristocracy and monarchy toward 
republicanism. There may be a nominal king. I do not 
object to that. Names do not change anything. I would 
as lief have a man or a woman (I would rather have a 
woman, on an average !) to be called king or queen as to have 
a man to be called president. And as to the class of nobility, 
there have been periods when they, or when the nobility 
combined with the monarch, were adapted to the condi- 
tions of the people; but as the people are themselves be- 
coming intelligent, they are tending toward a state of 
things that will inevitably make them partners of the great 
governing power. England is working toward self-govern- 
ment. 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 389 

The republican form of government is the noblest and 
the best, as it is the latest. It is the latest because it 
demands the highest conditions for its existence. Self- 
government by the whole people is the teleologic idea. It 
is to be the final government of the world. As to whether 
the world is ripe enough to develop such a government, 
which shall be able to maintain itself through any consid- 
erable number of generations, it is useless to speculate. 

But the process of developing a good and stable re- 
publican government may go through ages. It is not a 
settled fact at all, that, because we have come into a re- 
publican government, this nation is going to live and be 
perfected in it; because it is often the case that one govern- 
ment rises up and works out one or two elements of the 
great scheme which God is developing in this world, and 
then dissolves, and that the next government takes up and 
carries forward that which the first began. It may be that 
the work which we have begun is to be taken up and car- 
ried forward by a government that is to succeed this. Yet 
there is a counter analogy to this, — the fadt that God is 
giving to nations that have declined, and well-nigh lost 
their national life, rejuvenescence. We see what was never 
before seen, — a nation, after having died, come to life 
again. Italy has found resurrection, and is growing strong. 
Spain has been resuscitated, and is growing strong. Even 
Austria is coming up from senility, and seems to be grow- 
ing strong. Nations now seem to have a recuperative 
power. And two things are possible in respect to our own 
people. Having taken the first steps in the demonstration 
of the great doctrine of the government of the people by 
the people, our whole national life may collapse, and new 
nations may come up and carry on that doctrine in its later 
development; or, having gone through one period of our 
growth, we may renew our youth, and go on again in the 
same grand and divine experiment of government which 
we have wrought out thus far. 

And let me say here, that republican governments cannot 
be had by any mere legislation. They must be the effect 
of compelling causes. Government is an outworking of 



39° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the spirit of the people, and it holds a constant relation to 
their actual condition. 

If men are ignorant, or morally low, even under re- 
publics, they will cease to be self-governing. They will be 
led by cunning men, who will gain power over them by 
courting their passions, and lead them, not according to 
the decisions and judgments of the masses, but according 
to the schemes and plans of those who acquire a surrepti- 
tious influence over them. 

This is the meaning of our text, " That the hypocrite 
reign not, lest the people be ensnared." Under republican 
governments it is possible for men to be ensnared by 
cunning men, and, while they seem to be controlling their 
own destinies, to be themselves absolutely controlled and 
guided and governed. 

There will always be large classes of men whose spirit 
and training will cause them to be antagonistic to self- 
government. Proud and haughty natures are the perpet- 
ual enemies of republicanism. There are institutions in 
society — some of them religious institutions— that nourish 
the spirit of governing. Even the teaching of God's 
supremacy, and of a certain delegation of Divine author- 
ity to those who teach it, comes to be an inculcation of 
government in such a sense as to train men to the love of 
governing. Always, in every republican government, there 
are large elements which tend away from that government 
toward a strong government. 

Yet, in spite of all delays and retrocessions and plot- 
tings, unquestionably the human race are developing right 
on toward this final and best form of government. In 
every generation tyranny contracts its sphere; and now we 
see the beginnings of the preparation for a higher type of 
government. Despotisms are becoming constitutional 
monarchies, constitutional monarchies are becoming aristoc- 
racies, and aristocracies are becoming republican govern- 
ments. And the tendency of the whole world at present, 
in every one of its departments, is to develop the common 
people. Almost every influence that is working in the 
world now, judging it from hundred years to hundred 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 391 

years, is flowing in one direction; and that direction is 
toward the emancipation and elevation and education and 
empowering of the great mass of mankind. 

The tendency of rehgion is in this direction. It has 
worlied out one vein, and liierarchies have had their day. 
It is taking on more democratic forms, and it will take 
them on from this time forth. 

The spirit of missions has had an important and unsus- 
pected democratic influence. The attempt of Christian 
nations, at a vast expense, and with great trouble, to civil- 
ize poor, miserable barbarians, has been itself a testimony 
to the worth of poor, miserable barbarians. It has had a 
tendency to increase in the popular estimation the value 
of a man without regard to his accidents, without regard 
to his condition or circumstances. Man, merely as a 
creature of God and an heir of immortality, has risen in 
the market. Before Christianity was revealed, do you 
suppose any nation on earth were such fools as to spend 
millions of annual dollars to civilize barbarians ! Before 
the time of Christ, it was an offense punishable with slavery 
or death to be a foreigner. If a mariner was shipwrecked 
upon a foreign coast, he was put to death or made a slave, 
on the charge of being a foreigner. Clear down to the 
days of the Apostles, to be a foreigner was to be nothing at 
all. The Greeks did not recognize human existence ex- 
cept as Greek existence. They counted all the rest of the 
world as trash, literally and truly. They learned no lan- 
guages but their own. The Greek tongue prevailed in 
Greece, and there was not another language spoken there. 
The Greeks scorned to learn any language but their own. 
They called other languages noises. The Greek tongue 
was considered a language articulate, having sense and 
philosophy and reason, and all other nations besides the 
Greeks were said to inake noises, in distinction from speak- 
ing. And their contempt of other peoples, previous to the 
setting forth of the Gospel, — how does it stand in con- 
trast with the spirit of modern Christian nations ! For 
England and France and Germany and America are send- 
ing out, every year, scores and scores of men elected and 



392 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

consecrated to the work of evangelization abroad. They 
give their lives freely to that work, and countless treasures 
are raised at home for their sustenance while they are 
ministering to barbarians in other lands. What a witness 
is this to the value of man ! What a thing is worth, is to 
be measured by what men will do and suffer for it. And 
silently, imperceptibly, "and unconsciously, missions have 
become democratic, and have raised in the estimation of 
the world the worth of man; — not this man or that man; 
not a man of this nation, or a man of that nation; not a 
civilized man; not a man of genius; not a man of skill; 
not a man of learning; but man, with just the original at- 
tributes that God gave him. Religious influences, for two 
thousand years, have been meliorating laws and policies 
and governments so as to bring them more on the side of 
the people. 

And now, at last, almost all the great causes of human 
conduct are working in that direction. If you examine 
the tendency of inventions and mechanic arts, you shall 
find that, although they work for all men, they do not 
work half so much for the rich, the strong, and the wise, 
as they do for the poor, the weak, and the ignorant. 
When steam was invented, it was the poor man's invention; 
for it has elevated the poor man ten degrees where it has 
the rich man one. Now the poor man can travel the 
world over. Once, only the rich man could do it; but 
steam has made them equal. The rich man always could 
wear fine fabrics. The poor man could not, till steam 
made manufacturing cheap. The rich man always could 
have luxuries. The poor man could not, till art and science 
were applied to domestic institutions and common life; 
and then he could. Now the poor man has better food 
than the rich man used to have, and he knows better how 
to cook it than the rich man once did. There is not a 
truckman in New York that does not live better than 
Alexander lived. There is not a seamstress that does not 
have on her table things that would have made Queen 
Elizabeth stare. Take the bill of provender, I was going 
to say, of Shakespeare's time. You might almost call it 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 393 

fodder, it was so coarse, and so much like animals' food. 
We should think ourselves treated worse than the prison- 
ers at Sing Sing, if we had to live as the royalty did three 
or four hundred years ago. They would have been glad 
to live as our poor people live now, who are clothed better 
than they were, who have better houses than they had, 
and whose instruments of labor necessitate less drudgery 
than theirs did. For every machine, although when first 
invented it seems to supersede the laborer, has the effect 
to raise the laborer one step higher. Every time an iron 
muscle is invented, it gives emancipation to human muscle. 
Every time you enslave a machine, — a slave that you have 
a right to hold in bondage,— you set free ten thousand 
slaves, that ought not to be held in bondage. And these 
are revolutionizing forces that you cannot get around. 
You might as well undertake to change the course of the 
Gulf Stream as to undertake to arrest their tendency. 

And that which is true of art is also true of literature. 
If you go back to the time of Sterne and Swift, you shall 
not find, I had almost said, a single generous, humanita- 
rian sentiment in their writings. One thing is certain, — 
that down to the time of Cowper, the English literature 
(that part which comprised the poems particularly) was 
filled with a supercilious contempt for the common people. 
The boors, the peasants, the yeomen, were considered as 
mats on which fine people might rub their feet and clean 
their shoes; as good for nothing in themselves, and serv- 
iceable only by reason of their relation to the upper classes. 
And the spirit of humanity, the appreciation of human 
worth under a rough exterior, and, above all, the desire 
for the welfare of every man, — these sprang up within the 
last hundred years. Our literature has been growing 
purer. Nor is it so with ours alone; for the French litera- 
ture has improved as well as ours. I do not know that the 
French have as many Tract Societies as we have. But if 
it is religious to aim to develop the poor, and to create a 
powerful tendency toward humanity and self-sacrifice and 
purity, then such writers as Victor Hugo are religious 
writers. They are not spiritual writers, but they- are relig- 



394 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ious, in that they are aiming toward the evangelization 
of the masses of men. And the literature of the globe 
to-day is humane, at least, if it is not spiritual. 

If you go from literature to art, you find this still more 
remarkably illustrated. The days are waning in which 
royalty, aristocrats, and rich men can be said to be the 
chief patrons of art; and he that would be exalted as an 
artist must humble himself, and accept the divine idea of 
the grandeur of the common people, and not disdain their 
sympathy and their patronage. I do not object to those 
who painted the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus; but I 
think the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus are more to us 
than they were to those that painted them. What are 
they to us ? Mother and child. Mary and Jesus were for 
a particular age. Mother and child are universal. They 
are something that comes home to every household and 
every heart. And the Madonna and her child are more to 
us, I say, than they were to those that painted them. And 
though I do not object to the painting of antique subjects, 
the subjects of past days, unquestionably the living schools 
are to be the schools that feel themselves called to work 
for the common people, and in the direction of true and 
Christian democracy. 

Once a picture was significant of almost royal posses- 
sions. It is becoming less and less significant of wealth. 
Indeed, I think that pictures are less apt to be found where 
there is sudden wealth, than where there is real culture 
and good taste in comparative poverty. More and more 
every year pictures are coming to be owned by persons of 
moderate and slender means, because they have an appe- 
tite for beauty, and must have beauty to feed it. One 
flower in the room of a seamstress who looks at it every 
other stitch, is worth more than the garden of a king which 
he disdains to walk in. So there is a love of art begin- 
ning to develop in the common people. And all things are 
tending to make it possible for the common people to grat- 
ify their taste in this direction. 

Once nobody could own a book unless he had a fortune. 
Now a man that cannot afford to own a book ought to die; 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 395 

he is too poor to live ! It is the cheapest thing there is. 
Rum and reading are the two cheapest commodities of the 
globe ! 

Take one single invention, — photography. The world 
will never die after this. It will live in shadow. We shall 
have our uncles and aunts, our fathers and mothers, our 
children, and our children's children in every year's stage; 
and we can keep them. What a shadowy army is marching, 
in the shape of photographic portraits, to the next genera- 
tion ! O that it could have been so in days past ! My 
mother died when I was but a small child, and I do not re- 
member to have ever seen her face. And as there was no 
pencil that could afford to limn her, I have never seen a 
likeness of her. Would to God that I could see some pict- 
ure of my mother ! No picture that hangs on prince's 
wall, or in gallery, would I not give, if I might choose, for 
a faithful portrait of my mother. Give me that above all 
other pictures under God's canopy. My children are richer 
than I wras when I was a child. The child of the poorest 
man in this congregation is richer than the child of the 
richest man was then. 

And not only is photography enabling us to preserve our 
friends but it is bringing the whole world to a man's door. 
You can look upon the monuments of Egypt, and at the 
same time toast your feet at your own fire. All the palaces 
of the globe are brought to you, as are also the mountains 
and rivers of distant countries. The very battle-field of 
Antietam was here almost as soon as the news of the battle 
reached us; and before the dead were buried, we had por- 
trayed their mangled and swollen forms. 

And not only is photography taking representations of 
all the natural and artificial wonders of the globe, so that 
the poorest man can have the portrait of everything 
on earth; but it is taking even the secrets of the sun and 
moon. 

And these are but single instances of elements which are, 
as we see, working to make rich and strongmen richer and 
stronger, to be sure, but working ten thousand times more 
to make the poor and the weak rich and strong. 



396 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

And as in respect to these elements, so in respect to 
learning and education. Always the rich have been able 
to educate their children. Not always have the poor been 
able to do it. But now everything is working toward the 
education of the common people. 

So that at this time, while governments are ameliorating, 
while absolute monarchies are changing to constitutional 
monarchies, while constitutional monarchies are becoming 
aristocracies, while aristocracies are more and more diffus- 
ing themselves, and sharing their power with the masses, 
while all tendencies are toward self-government in polit- 
ical forms, — at this time, while these things are taking 
place, religion and art and learning and science and inven- 
tions are co-operating. There is one direction to all these 
forces. God's hand, like a sign-board, is pointing toward 
democracy, and saying to the nations of the earth, " This is 
the way: walk ye in it." The road is very muddy in some 
spots, and the march will be slow, but the march will be 
one way; and though it may be like the march into sum- 
mer out of winter, or like the march of Israel out of Egypt 
into the promised land, summer and the promised land — 
self-government — will at last be reached. 

Let us look, then, in the light of these remarks, at some 
of the relations of our own times to this tendency. 

The first thing to which I will call your attention is that 
extraordinary contrast which exists between this country 
and the other countries of the world, — the most extraor- 
dinary, I think, that was ever exhibited under the sun. 
Europe, starting from a point of abject despotism, has, for 
the last two hundred years, been steadily unfolding, and 
throwing off its cerements, and working its limbs, and pre- 
paring its feet for marching. Nay, it has begun to march. 
And though its way is through revolutions and through 
blood, though it is held back by reactions and retroces- 
sions, yet, on the whole, judged by long periods of time, 
the progress of Europe has been from barbarism to Chris- 
tian civilization; from absolute monarchies, up through 
constitutional monarchies and aristocracies, toward gov- 
ernments by the people. And all tendencies, however much 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 397 

they may have seemed to thwart these things, have really 
worked for them. Europe began at the point of despot- 
ism, and she has gone toward republicanism until she has 
all but grasped it. 

How was it with America ? We began at the point of 
Christian democracy. There never was so democratic a 
people as we were. There never was a nation with such 
developments of republican ideas. And we have steadily 
marched in the opposite direction. We have gone right 
away from democracy toward aristocracy. We have tended 
more and more to deny the natural rights of man, and set 
the strong over the weak (the white strong over the black 
weak), and to found a new dynasty, most hateful and 
odious, until we are poisoned in the very veins of our na- 
tional life, in every part of our governmental polic3^ 

And while Europe has been going in one direction, we 
have met her, going in the other, she bearing the dark em- 
blem of despotism, which has grown brighter and brighter 
until it has almost emerged into the glorious light of lib- 
erty, and we bearing a blazing torch kindled from the very 
altar of God, which has grown dimmer and dimmer till it 
has almost sunk into Egyptian darkness. There never was 
another such contrast. 

That tendency has been met, and, in so far as the free 
Northern States are concerned, turned back, but oniy just 
in time for their redemption. But the attempt to recover 
ourselves has led to a conflict between these opposite ele- 
ments such as never before raged. For this war is a war 
of ideas; it is a war of fundamental principles; it is a war 
of absolute influences; it is a war between the spirit of 
absolute government as developed by the necessities of a 
servile society, and the spirit of self-government as de- 
veloped by the condition of an intelligent population. 

Now there can hardly be a doubt as to the final issue. 
God's intention is too plainly indicated to leave any doubt 
as to the ultimate state of the world. But whether that 
state is to exist in our day, in our children's time, or in re- 
mote ages, no man can tell. We know which side, after 
tumultuous struggles, shall have the victory, but whether 



398 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

that victory shall be delayed through generations, or 
whether it shall be achieved at once, we do not know. 

Yet, let us take a hopeful view. Let us hope that we 
shall be found adequate to the exigencies which have come 
upon us. Let us not be bribed nor betrayed. There is no 
question but that the right is with us. Every principle of 
justice and humanity that has been developed in the past 
cries out to us of the North to go forward. Every analogy 
of God's providence calls out to us to advance coura- 
geously. Every aspiration of the human soul urges us, who 
are on the side of universal liberty, the liberty of all men, 
not to yield, not to compromise, but to maintain our stand 
to the bitter end, and to the glorious victory therein. 

I believe that this nation will not flinch, and that it will 
stand. Yet I do not know the power of the Devil. His 
minions, his hypocritical agents, are abroad. I do not dis- 
guise my opinion on this subject, any more than on any 
other. I believe the opposition that has arisen against the 
administration and the government is the meanest and 
most hypocritical that ever existed. I would sooner pluck 
off my right arm than give countenance to it in any way. 
There was a time when I felt that all party spirit was being 
laid aside, and that all parties were being united to sustain 
the administration in the prosecution of this glorious war 
in the cause of universal humanity. I was in favor of 
sinking all political considerations, and standing by those 
men that best stood by the government. But since the 
enemy has sown tares among us, and an opposition has 
been formed, God do so to me, and more also, if I strike 
hands except with him who is openly and avowedly for 
liberty, and liberty for every man. I would denounce my 
own brother, I would denounce my own father, if he were 
ranged on the side of these enemies of their country and 
of freedom. I love my God and my fellow-men more than 
any man that carries my blood in his veins. And however 
much men may have been my friends, however much I 
would have been glad to help men into places of power, 
once let them stand on the side of those detestable hypo- 
crites who are undermining with specious pretenses the 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 399 

cause of liberty, and who, by infamous guises, are feign- 
ing friendship for an administration wliich they mean to 
destroy, God do so to me, and more also, if I touch them, 
except with the besom or with the rod of destruction. 

But, although in the main I hope, let us be prepared for 
the worst. We have materials for a terrible conflict among 
ourselves. It is not the fault of those who invite them 
that we have not revolutionary outbreaks in our midst. 
I have no doubt that there are men in New York who 
would inaugurate blood, murder, and revolution, if they 
dared. The only thing which holds them back is a sneak- 
ing prudence. But for that we should have another era of 
massacre such as Paris saw in the days of the French 
Revolution. There are men in our midst who are so 
wicked that they do not need to go to hell ! They carry 
it with them; it is in them; and they are their own devil ! 
And these are the men, unquestionably, that are first and 
foremost as plotters in that specious, sinuous friendship 
that would go to the administration, and say, " How art 
thou, my brother?" while it plunges the dagger under the 
fifth rib. Be not found in their counsels. O my soul, 
come not into their secrets. It is not a safe thing for a 
man that keeps well to his God and his country to keep 
such company. Take care whom you go with. And when 
you go to vote, vote so strong for liberty that there shall 
not be any danger in your vote.* Throw it as far as 
you can toward God's throne, toward God's providence, 
toward the destiny of the race, toward the final results of 
Christianity. Throw it away from glozing, deceitful, self- 
ish man. Go with the stanchest principles. Go back to 
the days when we had Franklins and Jeffersons and Wash- 
ingtons, and take their utterances, and follow their pre- 
cepts. The only way for us to escape troubles innumera- 
ble, I think, is to fight out this battle which we have 
entered upon, with courage and energy, and to the very 
last. You never will have another war so cheap as this. 
Suppose you should make peace with the South by sliding 
these unprincipled and subtle politicians into power, — 

*The reference is to the then pending State election of New York. 



400 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

suppose you should compel the weak hands of the govern- 
ment to yield to a compromise with the South, — do you 
suppose that would bring peace in your day? 

From the moment that they get on their feet again, every 
election in the North will turn upon whether one State or 
another shall not go over to the Southern interest; and 
there will be a fight between Northern and Southern in- 
terests, and you will have to vote under the menace of 
arms, and hold your ground by force, or go down before 
threats. And when it comes to threatening, the South is 
worth a hundred of you. When it comes to knuckling, 
you are worth a hundred of the South ! You are on your 
feet now, and I advise you to keep there. Your hands are 
out, with your hearts behind them, and I advise you to 
keep them out. There has never been a sight more despi- 
cable than that of Northern doughfaces in the presence of 
Southern slave-drivers; and now that Northern manhood 
is emancipated, and you are standing up, I beseech of you 
in the name of God and humanity, do not put yourself 
again into bondage and servility. 

Money, — will that buy you ? Then stand for liberty. A 
slave made free will purchase a hundred dollars' worth at 
your factory where a slave in bondage will purchase one 
dollar's worth. What does a slave want ? How many 
combs will he buy? How many mirrors? How much 
glass ? How many pianos ? How many harps ? How 
many books ? How many harnesses ? How many whips ? 
One in the hands of a single man is enough for forty 
slaves. Freedom will diminish exports immensely. Why? 
Because, when the slaves were slaves, they lived on the 
least conceivable quantity of everything, and there was a 
great surplus for exporting. But the moment you make 
them free, they will become consumers to a much greater 
degree than they have been. If you must have a money 
motive, I advocate freedom on this ground. Freedom 
promotes commerce and manufactures. There is not a 
farmer to whom, if his plough could speak, it would not 
say, " Go for freedom, — it will make me bright;" there is 
not a mechanic to whom his every tool, if it could speak, 



THE GROUND AND FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 401 

would not say, " Vote for freedom, — it will make me 
lively;" there is not a ship-builder to whom every ship in 
his yard, if it could speak, would not say, " Work for free- 
dom, — it will make me merry on the wave;" there is not 
a manufacturer to whom his machinery, if it could speak, 
would not say, " Encourage freedom, — it will make me 
musical." 

All the factories in New England, if they could vote, 
would vote for freedom, — except cat-o'-nine-tail factories; 
I believe they would vote for slavery. No; they would 
turn about and go to making horsewhips, and, on second 
thought, vote for freedom ! Every interest of agriculture, 
commerce, and manufactures, every industrial interest of 
the North, will be abundantly profited by a policy of lib- 
erty. As civilization increases among men, it makes them 
more, and multiplies their necessities. When a man is a 
savage, he has but one or two faculties to feed; but when 
he becomes civilized, he has a great many more mouths 
open and calling for food. For the more the human mind 
is developed, the more numerous are its wants which must 
be supplied. And blessed is that nation which has to sup- 
ply the wants of a civilized people. They are great con- 
sumers. 

It is supposed that the natural state of a man is simplic- 
ity. No, it is complexity. The natural state of a man is 
like that of a tree. And what is the last state of an oak, 
but to divide and subdivide, and spread out infinite 
branches on every side ? The first state of a man, like the 
first state of a tree, may be simplicity, and he may be, as 
it were, a single whip; but as he begins to grow he will 
throw out branches, and these branches will throw out 
other branches, and those will throw out others, and he 
will take in more by root and leaf. Every interest that 
makes money and intelligence pleads for a policy of 
liberty. 

And since there is a necessity for it, since by the voice 
of the highest officer of the nation it has been declared 
that emancipation is a military necessity, let us stand by 
that which we have got. Let us not fall back one single 



402 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Step in this great conflict, in which thus far God has so 
gloriously led us. For if this nation falls to pieces in your 
day, or in your child's day, will it come together again ? 
No hand has ever yet restored the Phidian marbles. No 
architect has ever rebuilt Athens. The Acropolis is 
disheveled and rent, a monument of her death, and a 
memorial of her past glory. But it is easier to bring to- 
gether shattered temples than it will be to bring together 
the shattered principles of this great temple of liberty 
which has been reared in our country, if you permit it to 
be rent. It is a doctrine of devils, this doctrine of divis- 
ion. While you have the power, hold the nation together. 
Weld it. Secure the unity of this people, voluntary at the 
North, and compelled at the South. One government, 
one Constitution, one political doctrine which makes all 
men free and equal, — that shall be the glory of the conti- 
nent; that shall be the prophecy of the future; that shall 
bring down the blessing of God, against which all the 
machinations of the Devil shall not prevail. 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS.* 



" For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty : only use not liberty 
for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another." — Gal. v. 13. 



It has been said, usually, that this and like passages 
were metaphorical and signified simply spiritual liberty. 
They include that; but they neither begin nor end with it. 

The Apostle is not discussing, either, the question of 
personal liberty. That is but an inference and special ap- 
plication of a larger right than even civil and political lib- 
erty, — a right that lies back of all society and all individual 
volition, and depends in nothing upon men's opinions or 
arrangements, but stands in the Divine arrangement, in the 
creative decree. 

What, then, is liberty, — the source or fountain of which all 
other liberties are but streams or defluctions ? 

There can be no such thing as absolute liberty, — that is, 
the liberty of acting according to our own wishes, without 
hindrance and without limitation; for man is created to 
act by means of certain laws. Above all creatures on earth, 
man is placed under many and exacting laws. He is sur- 
rounded, he is walled in, he is domed and circuited by 
laws; and every one of them is imperative. And it is the 
law of the animal creation, that, as you augment being, 
you augment law. For there is no power, there is no 
faculty, in man, that is not relative to some law which it 
represents outside of him. And all laws of matter external 
to his own self are imperative upon him. And there is no 
such thing as liberty, in the largest sense, in the physical 
world. You are at liberty to go where you please, pro- 

* December 28, 1862, while the Emancipation Proclamation was ex- 
pected. 



404 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

vided you please to go where natural laws will let you; but 
if a man, on the top of one mountain, pleases to walk 
through the air to the next one, can he ? He is at liberty 
to try; but he will fall over the precipice below if he under- 
takes it. Has a man liberty to do as he pleases ? Let him 
walk on water. He has no such liberty. Our liberty is 
hedged in by natural law. There is no step that you can 
take without asking permission of laws, — and how many 
there are of them ! How many of them touch us at every 
point ! I am a focal center; and laws of light, laws of 
electricity, laws of gravitation, and social laws are running 
in on me perpetually, from every direction; and I am the 
creature of them all, and I am obliged to submit to them 
all. I cannot help myself. There is no such thing as 
real and absolute liberty in this regard. 

All laws of our physical body, of every organ of that 
body, must be observed. Thus, the eye has its law; and a 
man has liberty of sight only through obedience to that 
law. The ear has its law; the tongue has its law; the 
heart has its law; the lungs have their law. There is a 
law that belongs to each particular function of the phys- 
ical organization. And there is no liberty in a man except 
in obedience to those laws. Every faculty of the mind is 
a definite power, moving within fixed limits toward ends 
that cannot be varied. Thus, you cannot feel with the 
faculty that is made for thinking, and you cannot think 
with the faculty that is made for feeling, any more than 
you can digest food with the lungs, and breathe with the 
stomach. You cannot transpose functions from one faculty 
to another. You have received your mind, with its faculties, 
each of which has its inward law, impressed upon it of God; 
and the liberty that you have is a liberty which is obliged to 
take into account, not only the laws of the physical world, but 
also the laws of 3'^our body, and of all the faculties of your 
body. And the laws of society itself, as well as the laws 
developed through experience, are as binding and im- 
perative as the laws of nature, expressed in the material 
world, or in us. No creature is so harnessed by imperative 
and absolute laws as man; and therefore, than this vague 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 405 

but popular idea that liberty means doing just what you 
please, nothing can be further from the truth. No creature 
that God made on the earth has so little liberty to do what 
he pleases as man. You cannot use your arm except ac- 
cording to its muscles. You cannot use your foot except 
according to its organization. You cannot use any organ 
of the body except within the circuit of its appointed nat- 
ural law. You cannot use the mind nor the affections ex- 
cept according to their own laws. There is no liberty 
except inside of certain boundaries. 

The only liberty, then, that a man has, is the liberty to 
use himself, in all his powers, according to the laws which 
God has imposed on those powers. The only liberty in 
this world is the liberty to be unhindered in obeying nat- 
ural laws. Our directions, our tendencies, and therefore 
our duties, are all expressed in the laws that God has 
made; and when we come to those laws we are bound to 
obey them; and if anybody hinders us, then our liberties 
begin. As toward God, liberty means obedience to laws; 
and it is only when we are disputed in the right of this 
obedience by men, that we begin to get an idea of liberty. 
We have a right to obey God, whether he speaks on Sinai, 
or in muscle or bone or faculty, or any other way. It is 
our liberty to unfold natural laws, and to follow them. 

This may seem but a very narrow possession. It is so only 
in words, not in reality. It seems as though a man were 
shut up when you say that he can do nothing but obey a 
fixed natural law. The first thought suggested by the 
statement is that the liberty just to obey a law is a liberty 
so restricted as to be almost no liberty at all. That de- 
pends upon what the law includes. Take an example or 
two. You can do nothing in vision except what the laws 
of vision allow you to do; but how much there is that can 
be done in obedience to those laws. In a whole lifetime you 
cannot see all that there is to be seen. You must, if you 
use your ear, do it according to the acoustic law; and yet, 
in obeying that law, what a. liberty is opened up ! A man 
would need to be far older than Methuselah to exhaust 
sound in all its varieties and combinations. 



4o6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

This, then, is the sovereignty of man. It is the doctrine 
of the individual upon a Christian basis. It is the right of 
every man over liis own mind, heart, and body; over his 
time, movements, and relations to the physical world. It 
is the sovereignty of every man over himself. It is his 
right to have and hold and use himself according to the 
laws that God made. That is his liberty; and if any one 
attempts to take it away from him, he attempts to deprive 
him of so much of his liberty. If he does not know how 
to use himself thus, he loses by his ignorance so much of 
his liberty. 

This sovereignty has seldom been exercised by, or even 
revealed to, the mass of men in the world. Man has been 
rigidly hindered and hampered by civil and secular im- 
positions as to his body. Men have not been allowed to 
exercise their natural physical capacities according to the 
law of their own development. It has been in this respect 
as it was in Egypt in respect to business. It was ordained 
what calling a man should follow. If he was born of a 
priest, he had a right only to be a priest. If he was born 
of a mechanic, he was bound to be a mechanic. He 
could not elect, according to the formal law of adap- 
tation, what pursuit he would engage in, where he would 
go, or what he would be. Laws have divided men, cut 
them up into classes, and set apart to some much, to 
others less, to others still less, and to others almost 
nothing except the crumbs that fall from the table of the 
more favored. And it is no small thing to say to every 
human being on the earth, " God gave you the right to 
develop your body, and all that pertains to it, according to 
the law that is in you, and not according to the law that 
happens to be in the civil society where you are." 

You have that liberty. Do you not like the practice of 
law ? You can preach, if you please, and if you are com- 
petent. Do you not like the pulpit ? Nothing hinders 
you from turning to the store. Are you a turner? and do 
you find that you are thrown into a business that does not 
suit you ? Go to the forge, if you like. Nobody stands in 
the way of your doing it. Are you at the forge ? and do 




RTrv^cixrKA. (^ ^mL^. 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 4°? 

you say, " I am better adapted for a seaman " ? Then why 
do you not go on the deck ? Are you on deck ? and do you 
say, " Farming is that to which I am best suited " ? Then 
there is no authority or custom to prevent you from going 
on a farm. Do you say, *' I am too far north " ? Then go 
to the tropics: they are free to you. Or if you say, " I am 
too near the equatorial zone of unhealth," then it is your 
privilege to go to the frigid zone, if you choose. 

It seems a small thing to say that a man has a right to 
develop his bodily life according to the laws of the body; 
but that declaration in Georgia or Alabama would work a 
revolution in less than twenty-four hours. There are some 
four millions of men that, if you should say to them, " You 
have a right to develop your body according to natural 
law," would inaugui^te a servile revolution in a moment. 
For we are in such an exquisite state in this country, that 
to fall back on Divine law and original equity is to over- 
throw civil law. And yet against civil law, and by the au- 
thority of the Gospel, I declare to every man that lives on 
the face of the earth, " You are called to liberty." And as 
long as the Bible is held in the hands, not of priests, but 
of freemen, just so long it will be interpreted so as to 
sound a trumpet-call to every living man on earth, saying: 
" You have a right to go wherever the laws of your being 
permit you to go, and to do whatever those laws permit you 
to do." Though a man be born black as midnight, — though 
his face is as if all the stars of darkness had kissed him, — 
still, if he is born with the tongue of an orator, he has God's 
permission and God's ordination to be an orator; and no- 
body has a right to say to him, "You shall not." If a man 
has an artificer's skill in his hand, he has a right to cut and 
carve, whether it be machinery or statue or what not; and 
nobody has a right to say to him, " You shall not follow 
out the law that is infixed in your organization and your 
constitution." And this is what I consider to be the most 
atrocious thing in that most atrocious, heaven-abhorred and 
hell-beloved system of slavery. What ? that it gives a man 
coarse clothes ? John wore camel's hair and a leathern 
girdle, and he was well enough off. Is it because it gives 



4o8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

a man coarse food ? Thousands of you would be better 
off if you ate coarse food. Is it because in its workings 
men are underfed or underclothed ? Or, are they happy 
because they are overclothed and overfed ? Why, my 
pigs are happy, that have the liberty to grunt as much as 
they please, that have all they want to eat, and that have 
plenty of straw to lie on. And men defend slavery on the 
ground that the black men of the South are well fed and 
clothed, and are apparently happy in their condition; but 
the fact that they have enough to eat and to wear, and that 
they can sing, is no evidence that they have all the rights 
of their manhood. I say that they have a right to listen 
to the voice of God in their faculties and organization, and 
to follow out the laws that God has wrought in them. And 
that we have four millions of men before whom we stand 
in all the majesty of local and national law, and say: " You 
shall not come up into yourself; you shall not have the lib- 
erty to be what God made you able to be; you shall not 
be free to obey the laws of your being," — this is to go at 
right angles to Divine decrees; it is to contravene God's 
creative idea. 

Man has been robbed, likewise, of his mind, — that is, of 
his education. An uneducated mind is like undug ore. 
Iron on my farm is nothing. When I have dug it out, and 
smelted it, and purified it, and when it has been made into 
a sword, into knives, into utensils or machinery of any sort, 
then the mineral has been educated. Now a man is noth- 
ing but a mine of undug faculties. The first step in edu- 
cation consists in digging them out in the rough, prepar- 
atory to bringing them to their perfect form. When a man 
is first born, he is like an acorn. But in an acorn — that is, 
in its possible future — there is timber. In a bushel of 
acorns there are ships, there are dwellings, there are 
curiously carved cornices and statues. And when men are 
born, they are born into philosophers, into statesmen, into 
orators, into patriots, into wise men, — provided that, being 
born, they are planted, and developed, and given an op- 
portunity to grow to that which God thought of when he 
created them. But the belief of the human race has been 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 409 

that the man who knew much was a very dangerous creat- 
ure. The heresy of five thousand years out of six, and of 
five hundred more, and of a hundred more besides, has been 
that knowledge was dangerous for the common people. 

There are walking-sticks that are made for seats as well 
as walking-sticks. When they are shut up, they are like 
walking-sticks, and they cannot stand of themselves; but 
if you open them, there sprout out legs, that enable them 
not only to stand, but to support a man's weight. An un- 
educated man is like an unopened walking-stick of this 
kind. He cannot stand alone. He needs to lean on some 
king or government. It is not until he has been taken and 
educated and expanded that he can hold himself up. And 
it is this idea of developing that which God has put in 
every man, so that he can stand alone, that is the founda- 
tion of self-government, — the only divine government in 
this world. There are in each individual man all the 
faculties that are necessary, if they are balanced and co- 
ordinated, to make him a perfect being in his social organ- 
ization; and education means merely the opening up of a 
man, and giving him all his legs to stand on, and all his 
hands to help himself with. Those who govern others, and 
who maintain themselves by governing them, want men to 
need some one to lean on, and to take care of them; and 
therefore they do not want them opened up. Just that 
which they do not like is to have every man capable of 
standing of himself; for their interest demands a state of 
things in which one head shall think for a million heads, 
and one hand shall rule for a million hands. And it has 
been, since time began, the heresy that education was to be 
feared. Priests have been afraid, and prime ministers and 
princes and kings have been afraid, of education. And 
yet to every man belongs the liberty of having the fullest 
development of all that God put into the making of the 
human mind. We are called to liberty. It is a part of the 
design of that system which lies under the foundations of 
society, that every man has a right to the full use of every 
faculty of his mind according to the law that God estab- 
lished in that faculty. 



41 o PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

But man has been yet worse robbed in soul than even in 
body and mind. He has had presented to him false gods 
of every kind for his worship. And by the most rigorous 
despotism and the most fearful threatenings, he has been for- 
bidden to find his own way to God, and compelled to accept 
the gods that were fashioned for him. And when the true 
God has been revealed at length, after many generations, 
the way to the true God has been hedged up, and worship 
and obedience have been prescribed, and men have had 
no liberty of going their own way, but have been obliged 
to walk the priests' and the church's way. Thus man's 
whole ethical life has been framed and imposed upon him 
without his consent, and without appeal from it. And al- 
though much of the religion and ethics that has been 
taught has belonged to the true system, much of it has not. 
And nowhere else has man been so trained to be a coward 
as in maintaining his right to fashion his own ethical life, 
to worship and to find God in his own way; while nowhere 
else has sounded out so loudly the sweet voice of the Gos- 
pel, saying, "Ye are called unto liberty." 

I think men in this world, for the most part, have been 
much like orphans, to whom has been bequeathed a large 
estate, but whose fraudulent executor or guardian has kept 
them ignorant of their parents, their possessions, and their 
rights, and bound them out in every direction to ignomin- 
ious callings. God's great brood of orphan children have 
been in the hands of the Devil as their executor; and he 
has kept them from knowing anything of their Father, or 
of their inheritance, or of the liberty that belongs to them. 
Now the Gospel has come in to rip up the old settlement, 
expose the fraud, and bring the orphans back to their 
property and privileges again. And the voice of our text, 
the voice of the providence of God, to-day, is, " Ye are 
called to liberty." 

Let us, then, see how this call of the Gospel acts. Christ 
brought liberty to men. That is, in the first instance, he 
established man's true place in creation as a child of God; 
he told him what he was, and treated him as if he was such. 
While the humiliation of Christ, — not merely his being 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 411 

born in the likeness of a man, but his selecting for his 
parentage the lowest class in society, and his being born 
under circumstances indicative of the most impoverished 
condition, — while this certainly illustrates the design of 
God, and was meant to, and to do still more that is left out 
of sight, it determines man's place in creation. Christ came 
into the world among men that had no adventitious value. 
There was not, of those with whom he mingled during the 
first ten years of his earthly life, a man that could be proud 
on account of his clothes, his grounds, his house, his privi- 
leges, his honors, or his titles. Christ was born in the 
midst of men, and he lived for thirty years among men, that 
had absolutely nothing but their own individual selves. He 
associated with men, not because they were wise, educated, 
large men, not because they were privileged or titled men, 
but simply because they were men. For he wished to 
teach us that the lowest man on earth is a child of God. 
And if this is true of the lowest, how much more eminently 
is it true of everything higher than the lowest! He began 
at the bottom of life, and stuck close to the bottom of life, 
where there was simply man, and nothing else. And he 
bore witness by every word that he spoke, and by every 
deed that he performed, that man, low, base, undeveloped, 
least and lowest, is yet God's child. He is a child of eter- 
nity. He came hither from thence, and he goes thither 
again. He was God-wrought, and he feels a yearning for 
his parentage, and seeks again the source from which 
he came. Nor can he be measured by anything in this 
world. No latitudes drawn from the earth's surface can 
gird a man, and no longitudes can belt him. Take the 
lines of infinity, and measure him with them; take God's 
dwelling-place, and measure him by its instruments; meas- 
ure him by nothing else than these. Take the meanest, 
the most imbruted creature; take the blackest slave that, 
overworked and outworked, is kicked out to die under the 
frosty hedge, and whose bones even the crows do not wait 
to pick, and there is not a star that nightly blazes in the 
heavens, and speaks of God, that shall not burn to the 
socket and go out, before the spirit in that poor, low, mis- 



412 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

erable, brutish thing shall cease to flame up bright as God's 
own crown. The poorest creature, the lowest creature, the 
meanest creature, is immortal, is an eternal heir of God, 
and bears a spark of divinity within him. This revelation 
of what a man is, in and of his own nature, without any re- 
gard to his circumstances, is the key-note of civilization, 
and the key-note of the liberties of states and of communi- 
ties that shall be permanent and normal and philosophical. 
It is no small thing for a man to know that. Why, a 
slave that knows it and sings it, a slave that dreams of 
heaven and chants of Christ, is richer than is the richest 
master that has no god but the Devil, and stands higher 
in the sight of angels than he. For as angels come with 
God's blessings down to men, methinks they fly but a little 
way before they reach the spirits of some of those sainted 
old slaves, and that then they descend 

" Nine times the space that measures day and night 
To mortal men," 

and at last come to the master. And the difference lies in 
the simple fact that the former have in them Christ, the hope 
of glory. And the man who has that has done his march, 
and is ready to enter into his rest, and to ascend the throne 
which he has inherited. 

You know the story of Williams, the missionary among 
the Indians, who, it was supposed, was a kidnaped Bour- 
bon, sent off by some usurper of the throne, and who after- 
wards found out that he was of the stock of royalty, and 
spent part of his life in trying to collate the facts and 
make the chain of evidence complete that he was descended 
from the loins of kings, and was the rightful heir to the 
throne of France. It was not so, I presume; but suppose 
it had been so, think how, when the idea dawned upon him 
in his forest travels; how, when he came to take fact after 
fact, and put them together, and prove that he was of royal 
blood, and a monarch entitled to all the treasures of the 
empire, how he must have felt a heart-swell, though he 
might have deemed it best to continue a missionary ! I 
know not how it would have been with him, but I know how 
it would have been with me. If I had learned that I was 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 413 

born to human titles, and to all those regalities, and if I had 
chosen to be a missionary, I would have been a royal mis- 
sionary, and I would have given the people among whom 
I moved to understand that a king stooped when I stooped. 

Now Christ comes and whispers in the ears of men, say- 
ing: "You are an exiled child of royalty; you are an heir, 
through Jesus Christ, to an eternal inheritance, and thrones 
and dominions and crowns are yours." He says it to the 
poorest, the meanest, and the lowest, and fixes a man in 
the knowledge of his Father, his titles, his dignity, and his 
destiny. And what a liberty is there ! 

Christ restores and enforces the right of a man to use all 
his nature according to the law which God has fixed in 
every part of that nature, without hindrance from without. 
He does this by his Gospel; and I am entitled to preach 
that Gospel. But suppose I undertake to preach the Gos- 
pel in Georgia, in full, — not the letter which kills, but the 
spirit which makes alive ? Men want me to do it. I am 
frequently asked why I do not do it. They exhort me, 
with a" fidelity and a pathos that do not fail to touch me, 
to preach the Gospel ! And I have made up my mind 
that I will. And to-day I begin by declaring, in the words 
of this passage, '■'■ Ye have been called zmto liberty. " Hear it, 
every Calmuck, every Tartar, every Chinaman, every Jap- 
anese, every Italian, every Austrian, every Russian serf, 
every Frenchman; hear it, among the mountain fastnesses 
of Norway and Sweden, through England, and along the 
German coast; hear it in the islands of the sea; hear it, ye 
denizens of the forests of America; hear it, ye slaves on 
every plantation throughout the bounds of the land; every- 
where, in all the earth, hear the Gospel, — " Ye have been 
CALLED UNTO LIBERTY ! " And if you ask me, " What is 
that liberty ? " I declare that it is the right of every man 
who is born unto this world to use every power, every 
faculty of his being, according to the law that God has 
fixed in that power and in that faculty, and not according 
to any external imposition of man. This is the liberty to 
which you are called. And do you want me to preach the 
Gospel any more ? [ Voices: Amen ! Amen .''] "And let all the 



414 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

people say, Amen." The time is coming when these truths 
of Christ shall flame out, and when men shall understand 
that preaching the Gospel does not mean preaching genu- 
flexions and days and ordinances and abstract doctrines, 
but that there is a truth of the Gospel that carries emanci- 
pation through and through, right to the soul, right to the 
heart, and that makes every man that lives on the globe a 
son of God, and therefore impossible to be a slave. 

But, more in detail, Christ has given to every one of us 
liberty of thought and liberty of belief. It is not irrespon- 
sible liberty of thought that we are called to. We have 
no liberty of thinking that disdains the laws of thinking. 
There is no liberty that does not involve the observance of 
law. Nevertheless, you have, every man has, as much 
right as I have to read God's Word, to think what truths 
are in that word, and to use every part of the mind in 
reasoning upon those truths. Sometimes men say that 
faith requires us to lay aside our reason. I beg your par- 
don, it never does. I will tell you what I think about faith 
and reason. It is about these as it is about birds that 
both run and fly. A turkey that runs around in the woods 
never rises suddenly. It first runs on the ground till it 
gains sufficient momentum to enable it to rise and fly. 
Now I think that reason is like legs that run on the ground; 
and as soon as you have come to the end of the earth, if 
you need more, and you have faith, lift your wings, and 
you can fly. But one follows the other. Faith never can 
be said to be coincident with reason. Reason is that fac- 
ulty which knows things so far as they can be known; and 
up to the point to which they can be found out, you are 
free to use it; and, when you get to the end of knowing, 
if you have faith, then fly. All beyond is the region of 
faith. Faith is that which takes cognizance of things that 
are not within the sphere of knowing. And a part of 
Christian liberty is the right of free thinking and free be- 
lieving. 

If there are infidels here that have been accustomed to 
carp at religion, and that say that they have a right of free 
investigation, I beg to inform them that they have not that 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 415 

right any more than every Christian has it. You have the 
liberty to thinlc: we have the liberty to think. We are 
responsible for the laws of thought: you are responsible 
for the laws of thought. We all stand on one ground in 
that regard. And as far as the liberty of believing is con- 
cerned, we all have that. You may frame a doctrine dif- 
ferent from mine, and you have a right to your doctrine, 
and I have a right to mine. You have a right to use your 
liberty of believing, though I do not always respect the 
way in which men use their liberty of believing. You 
have a right to investigate, to think, to believe, and to 
frame doctrines; but you are bound to do these things ac- 
cording to certain laws of investigation, of thought, of 
belief, and of doctrine, that have been unfolded and estab- 
lished. 

A word more, perhaps, is required respecting this decla- 
ration that you have a right to use every part of your 
mind. There are old castles and old mansions that have 
some rooms that the children are not allowed to go into. 
They are "haunted" rooms. The children have lived ten 
or fifteen years without ever having entered those rooms, 
except, perhaps, occasionally at broad noonday. They 
would not go into them at night for all the world, because 
they are "haunted." 

Now the mind has haunted rooms; and on Sunday I 
reason in this place, with my causality, my comparison, my 
analogical powers, without disturbing anybody; but the 
moment that, in reasoning, I with mirth drive right toward 
a great truth, filled full of benignity toward men, and 
reverence toward God, men hear sounds proceeding from 
those rooms. If I am largely endowed with the organ of 
mirthfulness, what did God put it into mg" for but that it 
might be a help to me in reasoning? But the moment I 
begin to use it, men look toward the haunted rooms, and 
say, " I positively heard sounds that seemed like laugh- 
ter;" and they begin to exclaim against the desecration of 
the Sabbath ! 

Now, I declare the liberty of God's people to use every 
faculty of their mind on Sunday as well as on week-days. 



41 6 FA TRIO TIC ADDRESSES. 

A man has as much right to smile on Sunday as on Mon- 
day. He has as much right to laugh, if he has a good 
reason for laughing, in the church as out of it. It is 
foolish to laugh in either without a good reason; and if 
you have a good reason, it is foolish not to laugh ! It is 
every person's liberty to use every faculty that God put 
into his mind according to its laws, for a good purpose. 

The like is true in respect to imagination. Because this 
has been employed so much in the service of sin, men think 
that it is not fit to be employed in the service of God. But 
if it has been perverted, we must consecrate it, and lift it up 
to higher uses. And how blessed is that liberty from God 
to the human mind of using every one of the faculties ac- 
cording to the law that is in it ! 

There is also the liberty of worship which Christ has re- 
stored to us; and that is absolute. Why, you may be a 
Quaker; God is willing, and I am willing, if you are. Do 
not you want to be one ? Well, you may be a Presbyterian, 
if your conscience wants it, and your heart wants it; I am 
willing, and God is willing. Do not you like it? Then you 
may be a Methodist. If you do not like that, you may be 
a Baptist. If you do not like that, you may come here and 
be all together. If you do not want any of these nor all 
of them, what do you want? You are at liberty to choose 
the denomination that suits you best. 

When you are grown to manhood, and when, conscious 
of the purity of your intent, when, full of honor — when, 
revering moral sentiment as if it were a religion, you at 
last find one that is to be your companion for life, and 
when, drawing near, your heart would speak to her, who 
shall give a liturgy or ritual in which to utter the words of 
love? Who shail prescribe to you the mode of expressing 
devotion ? Your soul finds its own channel, and employs 
its own words; and no man may step between you and her 
whom you love to say, " Speak thus, and only thus." 

And if it be so when we meet our mere companions and 
equals, how much more is this royalty of liberty when the 
soul goes rolling back toward God, and would fain express 
its sense of love and gratitude in the presence of divine 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 417 

realities ! Who shall tell the soul how to speak to God ? 
Who shall tell my child how to come and throw its arms 
about me? What tyrannic schoolmaster shall stand in the 
door when my daughter would rush to me after a long 
separation, with sobs and silence to say, " I love ; " or 
with laughter and glee to say, " I love; " or with words well- 
measured and outpoured to say, "I love"? The soul asks 
no interpreter; it is its own interpreter; and no man may 
stand in its way and say to God what it wants to say. 
This would be an intrusion. If men ask your help in mat- 
ters of this kind, you may give it; but your help must not 
be their tyrant. 

There is also in this same gift of religion the liberty of 
beauty and of taste. A great many persons have felt that 
it was wicked for a Christian to dress beautifully. Do not 
misunderstand me. You have a right to use your rights 
and liberties as you please, when you please to subordinate 
them to others' benefits. Then it is perfectly right. And 
if, in accordance with this condition, a man in his own 
judgment says, "I do love beauty, and I will have it in 
my dwelling and on my person," in the name of the Lord 
Jesus Christ I rebuke those who pronounce it to be wicked, 
and I say to them, "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an 
offense unto me; for thou savorest not of the things that be 
of God." There is a royal liberty of all to follow every faculty 
in their mind according to the law that God put into that 
faculty, and not according to the law of society or of public 
sentiment. Of course there are many ethical questions of 
how far or how much; and these are legitimate questions; 
but that persons may enjoy beauty, robe themselves in it, 
surround themselves by it, and adorn their houses with it, 
I maintain. Though every man, in his own place and cir- 
cumstances, must determine how much of that liberty he 
shall dispense with or retain for the sake of others, the lib- 
erty is there; and no man can call you to account for it. 
And not only are men to allow you to enjoy that liberty, 
but they are bound to respect your employment of it, and 
they have no right to point to you and say, " He is a Chris- 
tian, and yet he dresses in those jewels and feathers and 



41 8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

trappings." It is because you are a Christian that you 
have a right, if you can afford it, to dress in silks and satins 
and diamonds. You have a riglit to do what you please in 
this regard, subject to God, and not to men. 

The time is coming when men must learn this. The 
first lesson of Christianity was a lesson of self-denial. 
Heretofore men have been obliged to learn how to live in 
abnegation. But the world is not always going to be in a 
state in which this will be necessary. The day is rapidly 
coming when intelligence, art, and abundance will every- 
where exist. And men must learn how to be rich, and be 
Christians too. They must learn how to be the admirers 
and creators and dispensers of beauty, and yet be Chris- 
tians. And although there is a royal sphere of Christian 
life in self-denial which we never shall be done with, in one 
place and another, — though there will be abnegation in 
every Christian life, — yet intelligence and art and abun- 
dance will belong to Christian life, and men must learn to 
be Christians in these things. And when a man says to 
me, " I cannot understand how it is that you, being a Chris- 
tian, possess yourself of so many things that are beautiful, 
and merely beautiful, while around about you is a world 
lying in wickedness," I reply that it is because I choose to 
raise up a higher idea for men to aim at in social life. If the 
notions of some men were carried out on this subject, we 
should dress, as John did, in camel's hair, and live in wil- 
dernesses and caves, and have insects for food. 

And that which is true of beauty and taste is also true of 
art, of music, of wealth, and of the occupations and pur- 
suits of life. 

But mark, that this is not the liberty of doing just as a 
man pleases as between himself and God. It is just the 
contrary. Every man, as between himself and God, is 
bound to do the things that are indicated by the law that 
he has received in himself, and outside of himself. But as 
respects your fellow-men around about you, it is your lib- 
erty, so far as they interfere with you, and attempt to hin- 
der you, to carry out the law of God as it has been mani- 
fested to you, to the fullest extent. 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 419 

It is this obedience to law that makes such liberty safe, 
and gives society such benefits from it. If it was a liberty 
that gave a man the right to do anything that he pleased, it 
might be dangerous. It would then be what is in the 
Bible called licentiousness. But where it consists in the 
right of a man to follow out divine laws as they are written 
in him, then the more broad that liberty is, the more per- 
fectly regulated and ordered and safe will the man's life 
be. A little liberty in men may be dangerous. Then give 
them more. It is said that a little learning is dangerous. 
Yes, a little learning is; but a little intelligence is not. 
There is a great difference between intelligence and learn- 
ing. A little intelligence is safe; a little more is safer yet; 
a little more is still safer; and the more a man has of it the 
better he is. For intelligence does not consist in the facts 
that a man knows. It consists in the power of knowing. 
It is the educated faculty in man. And so it is in respect 
to liberty. Liberty is meant for man, and man is meant 
for liberty; and the more you can make him understand 
the law of God that is in him, the more you can drive him 
up to a full obedience to, and to a complete use of, the law 
that is written in him, the more safe he will be. A man 
will be a better father, a better husband, a better brother, 
a better neighbor, a better citizen, and a better Christian, 
the more liberty he has. Liberty is the breath of the soul. 
It is that by which God meant that we should live. Men 
live just in proportion as they are free; and they come 
short of true living just in proportion as they are cramped 
and confined and imprisoned. And how few there are that 
live, in the large sense of the term! Nevertheless, we are 
called to the royal gift of liberty in Jesus Christ. 

But remember that there is something more. " Only use 
not liberty for an occasion to the flesh." Do not think that 
this liberty is for your own profit and benefit. Do not be 
stingy because you have the riches of liberty; " but by love 
serve one another," — become slaves to each other. By 
compulsion, no man should be a slave; but without com- 
pulsion, and under the drawings of love, every man should 
be. Do you want to see a slave ? Do not go down to 



420 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

those paradisiacal lying places in the South, to see the 
happy slave. I will point you to one. 

The day is drawing to a close. Through all the hours 
of it a slave has been moving about the house; and now, 
as twilight comes on, hear the slave singing a hymn. And 
what is it that this angelic choir is singing to? It is a little 
nothing, called a baby. And who is this slave, fit to be an 
angel in royalty of gifts, and in richness of cultivation ? 
Why, it is Mrs. Browning, the poetess, noble in understand- 
ing, versed in the lore of ages, deep in nature, full of treas- 
ure such as no king, no court, and no palace ever had. 
She sings. And when the little child is uneasy she serves 
it. When the child tires of the pillow and the cradle, it 
makes a pillow of her. And when she is weary, if the 
child does not wish to go, she still holds it. And when at 
last it will lie down, she still wakes for fear that the child 
will awake. And in every single hour of the night she 
hears its call. Not a whimper or sound from the child es- 
capes her notice. And she is up before the morning star. 
And, though weary, all day again this slave serves that little 
baby, — that little uncrowned despot of the heart ! 

Ah ! there is no slave out of heaven like a loving woman; 
and of all loving women there is no such slave as a mother. 
And how royal, next to God himself, are slaves ! But re- 
member what kind they must be. " By love serve one an- 
other." That is the coin that buys them. It is love, and 
it is giving one's self for another's benefit and to another's 
life in the fullness of love, that makes true slavery. How 
beautiful are those slaves that are slaves through love ! 
Not the Greek Slave could be compared with them. No 
ideal that we can form can approach to the glory of their 
nature. No measure can be found by which to estimate 
the value of one that is a slave through love to another's 
uses. 

It is a serious responsibility *hat goes with liberty; if 
you have it, you must use it in the fear of God for the good 
of others as well as for your own good. 

May God give us liberty, all of us, in Jesus Christ, and 
may he teach us to use that liberty as Christ himself used 



LIBERTY UNDER LAWS. 421 

it, " who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery 
to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, 
and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made 
in tlie likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a 
man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, 
even the death of the cross." And then may God highly 
exalt us as he exalted him, and give us, as he gave him, a 
name which is above every name, because our liberty has 
been used for others, and not for ourselves alone. 



THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY.' 

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



Mr. Henry Ward Beecher went to Great Britain al- 
ready well known at home as the favorite preacher of a large 
parish, an ardent advocate of certain leading reforms, one of 
the most popular lecturers of the country, a bold, out- 
spoken, fertile, ready, crowd -compelling orator, whose 
reported sermons and speeches were fuller of catholic 
humanity than of theological subtilties, and whose sympa- 
thies were of that lively sort which are apt to leap sectarian 
fold and find good Christians in every denomination. He 
was welcomed by friendly persons on the other side of the 
Atlantic, partly for these merits, partly also as " the son 
of the celebrated Dr. Beecher" and "the brother of Mrs. 
Beecher Stowe." 

After a few months' absence he returns to America, hav- 
ing finished a more remarkable embassy than any envoy 
who has represented us in Europe since Franklin pleaded 
the cause of the young Republic at the Court of Versailles. 
He kissed no royal hand, he talked with no courtly diplo- 
matists, he was the guest of no titled legislator, he had no 
official existence. But through the heart of the people he 
reached nobles, ministers, courtiers, the throne itself. He 
whom the " Times " attacks, he whom " Punch " carica- 
tures, is a power in the land. We may be very sure, that, 
if an American is the aim of their pensioned garroters and 
hired vitriol-throwers, he is an object of fear as well as of 
hatred, and that the assault proves his ability as well as his 
love of freedom and zeal for the nation to which he be- 
longs. 

Mr. Beecher's European story is a short one in time, but 

* Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly oi January, 1864, by permission 
of the iDublishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mififlin & Co., Boston. 



THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 423 

a long one in events. He went out a lamb, a tired clergy- 
man in need of travel; and as such he did not strive nor 
cry, nor did any man hear his voice in the streets. But in 
the den of lions where his pathway led him he remembered 
his own lion's nature, and uttered his voice to such effect 
that its echoes in the great vaulted caverns of London and 
Liverpool are still reaching us, as the sound of the wood- 
man's axe is heard long after the stroke is seen, as the 
light of the star shines upon us many days after its depart- 
ure from the source of radiance. 

Mr. Beecher made a single speech in Great Britain, but 
it was delivered piecemeal in different places. Its exor- 
dium was uttered on the ninth of October at Manchester, 
and its peroration was pronounced on the twentieth of the 
same month in Exeter Hall. He has himself furnished us 
an analysis of the train of representations and arguments 
of which this protracted and many-jointed oration was 
made up. At Manchester he attempted to give a history 
of that series of political movements, extending through 
half a century, the logical and inevitable end of which was 
open conflict between the two opposing forces of Freedom 
and Slavery. At Glasgow his discourse seems to have 
been almost unpremeditated. A meeting of one or two 
Temperance advocates, who had come to greet him as a 
brother in their cause, took on, "quite accidentally," a po- 
litical character, and Mr. Beecher gratified the assembly 
with an address which really looks as if it had been in 
great measure called forth by the pressure of the moment. 
It seems more like a conversation than a set harangue. 
First, he very good humoredly defines his position on the 
Temperance question, and then naturally slides into some 
self-revelations, which we who know him accept as the 
simple expression of the man's character. This plain 
speaking made him at home among strangers more imme- 
diately, perhaps, than anything else he could have told 
them. " I am born without moral fear. I have expressed 
my views in any audience, and it never cost me a struggle. 
I never could help doing it." 

The way a man handles his egoisms is a test of his mas- 



424 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

tery over an audience or a class of readers. What we want 
to know about the person who is to counsel or lead us is 
just what he is, and nobody can tell us so well as himself. 
iJEvery real master of speaking or writing uses his person- 
(jality as he would any other serviceable material; the very 
' moment a speaker or writer begins to use it, not for his 
main purpose, but for vanity's sake, as all weak people 
are sure to do, hearers and readers feel the difference in a 
moment. Mr. Beecher is a strong, healthy man, in mind 
and body. His nerves have never been corrugated with 
alcohol; his thinking-marrow is not brown with tobacco- 
fumes, like a meerschaum, as are the brains of so many 
unfortunate Americans; he is the same lusty, warm- 
blooded, strong-fibered, brave-hearted, bright-souled, clear- 
eyed creature that he was when the college boys at Am- 
herst acknowledged him as the chiefest among their 
football-kickers. He has the simple frankness of a man 
who feels himself to be perfectly sound in bodily, mental, 
and moral structure; and his self-revelation is a thousand 
times nobler than the assumed impersonality which is a 
common trick with cunning speakers who never forget 
their own interests. Thus it is, that, wherever Mr. Beecher 
goes, everybody feels, after he has addressed them once or 
twice, that they know him well, almost as if they had al- 
ways known him; and there is not a man in the land who 
has such a multitude that look upon him as if he were 
their brother. 

Having magnetized his Glasgow audience, he continued 
the subject already opened at Manchester by showing, in 
the midst of that great toiling population, the deadly in- 
fluence exerted by Slavery in bringing labor into contempt, 
and its ruinous consequences to the free workingman 
everywhere. In Edinburgh he explained how the Nation 
grew up out of separate States, each jealous of its special 
sovereignty; how the struggle for the control of the united 
Nation, after leaving it for a long time in the hands of the 
South, to be used in favor of Slavery, at length gave it into 
those of the North, whose influence was to be for Free- 
dom; and that for this reason the South, when it could no 



THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 425 

longer rule the Nation, rebelled against it. In Liverpool, 
the center of vast commercial and manufacturing interests, 
he showed how those interests are injured by Slavery, — 
" that this attempt to cover the fairest portion of the earth 
with a slave-population that buys nothing, and a degraded 
white population that buys next to nothing, should array 
against it the sympathy of every true political economist 
and every thoughtful and far-seeing manufacturer, as 
tending to strike at the vital want of commerce, — not the 
want of cotton, but the want of customers." 

In his great closing effort at Exeter Hall in London, Mr. 
Beecher began by disclaiming the honor of having been a 
pioneer in the anti-slavery movement, which he found in 
progress at his entry upon public life, when he " fell into 
the ranks, and fought as well as he knew how, in the ranks 
or in command." He unfolded before his audience the 
plan and connection of his previous addresses, showing 
how they were related to each other as parts of a consecu- 
tive series. He had endeavored, he told them, to enlist 
the judgment, the conscience, the interests of the British 
people against the attempt to spread Slavery over the con- 
tinent, and the rebellion it has kindled. He had shown that 
Slavery was the only cause of the war, that sympathy with 
the South was only aiding the building up of a slave-em- 
pire, that the North was contending for its own existence 
and that of popular institutions. 

Mr. Beecher then asked his audience to look at the 
question with him from the American point of view. He 
showed how the conflict began as a moral question; the 
sensitiveness of the South; the tenderness for them on the 
part of many Northern apologizers, with whom he himself 
had never stood. He pointed out how the question grad- 
ually emerged in politics; the encroachments of the South, 
until they reached the Judiciary itself; he repeated to 
them the admissions of Mr. Stephens as to the preponder- 
ating influence the South had all along held in the Govern- 
ment. An interruption obliged him to explain that ad- 
justment of our State and National governments which 
Englishmen seem to find so hard to understand. Nothing 



426 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

shows his peculiar powers to more advantage than just 
such interruptions. Then he displays his felicitous facility 
of illustration, his familiar way of bringing a great ques- 
tion to the test of some parallel fact that everybody before 
him knows. An American state-question looks as mys- 
terious to an English audience as an ear of Indian corn 
wrapt in its sheath to an English wheat-grower. Mr. 
Beecher husks it for them as only an American born and 
bred can do. He wants a few sharp questions to rouse 
his quick spirit. He could almost afford to carry with him 
his picadorcs to sting him with sarcasms, his cJiulos to flap 
their inflammatory epithets in his face, and his banderilleros 
to stab him with their fiery insults into a plaza de toros, — 
an audience of John Bulls. 

Having cleared up this matter so that our comatose 
cousins understood the relations of the dough and the 
apple in our national dumpling, — to borrow one of their 
royal reminiscences, — having eulogized the fidelity of the 
North to the national compact, he referred to the action 
of "that most true, honest, just, and conscientious magis- 
trate, Mr. Lincoln," — at the mention of whose name the 
audience cheered as long and loud as if they had descended 
from the ancient Ephesians. 

Mr. Beecher went on to show how the North could not 
help fighting when it was attacked, and to give the reasons 
that made it necessary to fight, — reasons which none but a 
consistent Friend or avowed non-resistant can pretend to 
dispute. His ordinary style in speaking is pointed, stac- 
caioed.^ as is that of most successful extemporaneous speak- 
ers; he is "short-gaited "; the movement of his thoughts 
is that of the chopping sea, rather than the long, rolling, 
rhythmical wave-procession of phrase-balancing rhetori- 
cians. But when the lance has pricked him deep enough, 
when the red flag has flashed in his face often enough, 
when the fireworks have hissed and sputtered around him 
long enough, when the cheers have warmed him so that 
all his life is roused, then his intellectual sparkle becomes 
a steady glow, and his nimble sentences change their form, 
and become long-drawn, stately periods. 



THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 427 

" Standing by my cradle, standing by my hearth, stand- 
ing by the altar of the church, standing by all the places 
that mark the name and memory of heroic men who 
poured their blood and lives for principle, I declare that in 
ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice everything we 
have for principle. If the love of popular liberty is dead 
in Great Britain, you will not understand us; but if the 
love of liberty lives as it once lived, and has worthy suc- 
cessors of those renowned men that were our ancestors as 
much as yours, and whose example and principles we in- 
herit to make fruitful as so much seed-corn in a new and 
fertile land, then you will understand our firm, invincible 
determination — deep as the sea, firm as the mountains, but 
calm as the heavens above us — to fight this war through 
at all hazards and at every cost." 

When have Englishmen listened to nobler words, fuller 
of the true soul of eloquence ? Never, surely, since their 
nation entered the abdominous period of its existence, 
recognized in all its ideal portraits, for which food and 
sleep are the prime conditions of well-being. Yet the old 
instinct which has made the name of Englishmen glorious 
in the past was there, in the audience before him, and 
there was " immense cheering," relieved by some slight 
colubrine demonstrations. 

Mr. Beecher openly accused certain " important organs " 
of deliberately darkening the truth and falsifying the 
facts. The audience thereupon gave three groans for a 
paper called the " Times," once respectably edited, now 
deservedly held- as cheap as an epigram of Mr. Carlyle's 
or a promise to pay dated at Richmond. He showed the 
monstrous absurdity of England's attacking us for fight- 
ing, and for fighting to uphold a principle. " On what 
shore has not the prow of your ships dashed ? What land 
is there with a name and a people where your banner has 
not led your soldiers? And when the great resurrection- 
reveille shall sound, it will muster British soldjers from 
every clime aifd people under the whole heaven. Ah! but 
it is said this is war against your own blood. How long' 
is it since you poured soldiers into Canada, and let all your 



42 8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

yards work day and night to avenge the taking of two men 
out of the Trent ?" How ignominious the pretended hu- 
manity of England looked in the light of these questions ! 
And even while Mr. Beecher was speaking, a lurid glow 
was crimsoning the waters of the Pacific from the flames 
of a great burning city, set on fire by British ships to 
avenge a crime committed by some remote inhabitant of 
the same country, — an act of wholesale barbarity unap- 
proached by any deed which can be laid to the charge of 
the American Union in the course of this long, exasperat- 
ing conflict ! 

Mr. Beecher explained that the people who sympathized 
with the South were those whose voices reached America, 
while the friends of the North were little heard. The first 
had bows and arrows; the second have shafts, but no bows 
to launch them. 

" How about the Russians ? " 

Everybody remembers how neatly Mr. Beecher caught this 
envenomed dart, and, turning it end for end, drove it through 
his antagonist's shield of triple bull's-hide. "Now you 
know what we felt when you were flirting with Mr. Mason 
at your Lord Mayor's banquet." A cleaner and straighter 
" counter " than that, if we may change the image to one 
his audience would appreciate better, is hardly to be found 
in the records of British pugilism. 

The orator concluded by a rather sanguine statement of 
his change of opinion as to British sentiment, of the as- 
surance he should carry back of the enthusiasm for the 
cause of the North, and by an exhortation to unity of action 
with those who share their civilization and religion, for the 
furtherance of the gospel and the happiness of mankind. 

The audience cheered again, Professor Newman moved 
a warm vote of thanks, and the meeting dissolved, wiser 
and better, we hope, for the truths which had been so boldly 
declared before them. 

What is the net result, so far as we can see, of Mr. 
Beecher's voluntary embassy? So far as he is concerned, 
it has been to lift him from the position of one of the most 
popular preachers and lecturers, to that of one of the most 



THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 429 

popular men in the countr}^ Those who hate late phi- 
lanthropy admire his courage. Those who disagree with 
him in theology recognize him as liaving a claim to the 
title of Apostle quite as good as that of John Eliot, whom 
Christian England sent to heathen America two centuries 
ago, and who, in spite of the singularly stupid question- 
ings of the natives, and the violent opposition of the 
sachems and powwows, or priests, succeeded in reclaiming 
large numbers of the copper-colored aborigines. 

The change of opinion wrought by Mr. Beecher in En- 
gland is far less easy to estimate; indeed, we shall never 
have the means of determining what it may have been. 
The organs of opinion which have been against us will 
continue their assaults, and those which have been our 
friends will continue to defend us. The public men who 
have committed themselves will be consistent in the right 
or in the wrong, as they may have chosen at first. To know 
what Mr. Beecher has effected, we must not go to Exeter 
Hall and follow its enthusiastic audience as they are swayed 
hither and thither by his arguments and appeals; we must 
not count the crowd of admiring friends and sympathizers 
whom he, like all personages of note, draws around him: 
the fire-fly calls other fire-flies about him, but the great 
community of beetles goes blundering round in the dark 
as before. Mr. Cobden has given us the test in a letter 
quoted by Mr. Beecher in the course of his speech at the 
Brooklyn Academy. " You will carry back," he says, "an 
intimate acquaintance with a state of feeling in this coun-- 
try among what, for [want of] a better name, I call the 
ruling class. Their sympathy is undoubtedly strongly for 
the South, with the instinctive satisfaction at the prospect 
of the disruption of the great Republic. It is natural 
enough." " But," he says, " our masses have an instinctive 
feeling that their cause is bound up in the prosperity of 
the States, — the United States. It is true that they have 
not a particle of power in the direct form of a vote; but 
when millions in this country are led by the religious mid- 
dle class, they can go and prevent the governing class from 
pursuing a policy hostile to their sympathies." 



43 O PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

This power of the non-voting classes is an idea that gives 
us pause. It is one of those suggestions, like Lord Brou- 
gham's of the "unknown public," which, in a single phrase, 
and a sentence or two of explanation, tell a whole history. 
This is the class John Bunyan wrote for before the bishops 
had his Allegory in presentable calf and gold-leaf, — before 
England knew that her poor tinker had shaped a pictured 
urn for her full of such visions as no dreamer had seen 
since Dante. This is the class that believes in John Bright 
and Richard Cobden and all the defenders of true Ameri- 
can principles. It absorbs intelligence as melting ice ren- 
ders heat latent; there is no living power directly generated 
with which we can move pistons and wheels, but the first 
step in the production of steam-force is to make the ice 
fluid. No intellectual thermometer can reveal to us how 
much ignorance or prejudice has melted away in the fire 
of Mr. Beecher's passionate eloquence, but by-and-by this 
will tell as a working-force. The non-voter's conscience 
will reach the Privy Council, and the hand of the ignorant, 
but Christianized laborer trace its own purpose in the let- 
ters of the royal signature. 

We are living in a period, not of events only, but of 
epochs. We are in the transition-stage from the miocene 
to the pliocene period of human existence. A new heaven 
is forming over our head behind the curtain of clouds 
which rises from our smoking battle-fields. A new earth is 
shaping itself under our feet amidst the tremors and con- 
vulsions that agitate the soil upon w^hich we tread. But 
there is no such thing as a surprise in the order of Nature. 
The kingdom of God, even, cometh not with observation. 

The visit of an overworked clergyman to Europe is not 
in appearance an event of momentous interest to the world. 
The fact that he delivered a few speeches before British 
audiences might seem to merit notice in a local paper or 
two, but is of very little consequence, one would say, to 
the British nation, compared to the fact that Her Majesty 
took an airing last Wednesday, or of much significance to 
Americans, by the side of the fact that his Excellency, 
Governor Seymour, had written a letter recommending the 



' THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 431 

Union Fire Company always to play on the wood-shed 
when the house is in flames. 

But, in point of fact, this unofficial visit of a private 
citizen — in connection with these addresses delivered to 
miscellaneous crowds by an envoy not extraordinary and 
a minister rmllip.otentiary, for all that his credentials showed 
— was an event of national importance. It was much 
more that this; it was the beginning of a new order of 
things in the relations of nations to each other. It is but 
a little while since any graceless woman who helped a 
crowned profligate to break the commandments could light 
a national quarrel with the taper that sealed her billets- 
doux to his equerries and grooms, and kindle it to a war 
with the fan that was supposed to hide her blushes. More 
and more, by virtue of advancing civilization and easy in- 
tercourse between distant lands, the average common sense 
and intelligence of the people begin to reach from nation 
to nation. Mr. Beecher's visit is the most notable expres- 
sion of this movement of national life. It marks the nisus 
formativus which begins the organization of that unwritten 
and only half spoken public opinion recognized by Mr. 
Cobden as a great underlying force even in England. It 
needs a little republican pollen-dust to cause the evolution 
of its else barren germs. The fruit of Mr. Beecher's visit 
will ripen in due time, not only in direct results, but in 
opening the way to future moral embassies, going forth 
unheralded, unsanctioned by State documents, in the sim- 
ple strength of Christian manhood, on their errands of 
truth and peace. 

The Devil had got the start of the clergyman, as he very 
often does, after all. The wretches who have been for 
three years pouring their leperous distillment into the ears 
of Great Britain had preoccupied the ground, and were 
determined to silence the minister, if they could. For this 
purpose they looked to the heathen populace of the nom- 
inally Christian British cities. They covered the walls 
with blood-red placards, they stimulated the mob by in- 
flammatory appeals, they filled the air with threats of riot 
and murder. It was in the midst of scenes like these that 



432 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the single, solitary American opened his lips to speak in 
behalf of his country. 

The danger is now over, and we find it hard to make 
real to our imagination the terrors of a mob such as 
swarms out of the dens of Liverpool and London. We 
know well enough in this country what Irish mobs are. 
The Old Country exports them to us in pieces, ready to 
put together on arriving, as we send houses to California. 
Ireland is the country of shillalahs and broken crowns, of 
Donnybrook fairs, where men with whisky in their heads 
settle their feuds or work off their sprightliness with the 
arms of Nature, sometimes aided by the least dangerous 
of weapons. But England is the land of prize-fights, of 
scientific brutality, which has flourished under the patron- 
age of her hereditary legislators and other " Corinthian " 
supporters. The pugilistic dynasty came in with the 
House of Brunswick, and has held divided empire with 
it ever since. The Briton who claims Chatham's language 
as his mother-tongue may appropriate the dialect of the 
ring as far more truly indigenous than the German-French 
of his every-day discourse. Of the three Burkes whose 
names are historical, the orator is known to but a few hun- 
dred thousands. The prize-fighter, with his interesting 
personal infirmity, is the common property of the mill- 
ions, and would have headed the list in celebrity, but for 
that other of the name who added a new invention to the 
arts of industry and enriched the English language with a 
term which bids fair to outlive the reputation of his illus- 
trious namesake. Around the professors and heroes of 
the art of personal violence are collected the practitioners 
of various callings less dignified by the manly qualities 
they demand. The Gangs of Three that waylay the soli- 
tary pedestrian, — the Choker in the middle, next the vic- 
tim who is to be strangled and cleaned out, — the larger 
guilds of Hustlers who bonnet a man and beat his breath 
out of him and empty his pockets before he knows what 
is the matter with him, — the Burglars, with their "jim- 
mies " in their pockets, — the fighting robbers, with their 
brass knuckles, — the whole set in a vast thief-constituency. 



THE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY. 433 

thick as rats in sewers, — these were the disputants whom 
the emissaries of the Slave Power called upon to refute 
the arguments of the Brooklyn clergyman. 

It was not pleasant to move in streets where such human 
rattlesnakes and cobras were coiling and lying in wait. 
Great cities are the poison-glands of civilization every- 
where; but the secretions of those hideous crypts and 
blind passages that empty themselves into the thorough- 
fares of English towns are so deadly, that, but for her 
penal colonies, England, girt by water, as the scorpion 
with flame, would perish, self-stung, by her own venom. 
The legates of the great Anti-Civilization have colonized 
England, as England has colonized Botany Bay. They 
know the venal ruffianism of the fist and bludgeon, as well 
as that of the press. Fortunately, they are short of funds, 
or Mr. Beecher might have disappeared after the manner 
of Romulus, and never have come to light, except in the 
saintly fashion of relics, — such as white finger-rings and 
breast-pins, like those which some devotees of the South- 
ern mode of worship are said to have been fond of wear- 
ing. 

From these dangers, which he faced like a man, we wel- 
come him back to a country which is proud of his courage 
and ability and grateful for his services. The highest and 
lowest classes of England cannot be in sympathy with the 
free North. No dynasty can look the fact of successful, tri-l 
umphant self-government in the face without seeing al 
shroud in its banner and hearing a knell in its shouts ofj 
victory. As to those lower classes who are too low to be 
reached by the life-giving breath of popular liberty, we 
cannot reach them yet. A Christian civilization has suf- 
fered them, in the very heart of its great cities, to sink 
almost to the level of Du Chaillu's West-African quadru- 
mana. But the thoughtful, religious middle class of Great 
Britain, with their enlightened leaders and their conscien- 
tious followers among the laboring masses, have listened 
and will always listen to the voice of any true and ade- 
quate representative of that new form of human society 
now in full course of development in Republican North 



434 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

America. They have never listened to a nobler and more 
thoroughly national speaker than the minister, clothed 
with full powers from Nature and bearing the authentic 
credentials from his Divine Master, to whom, on his return 
from his successful embassy, we renew our grateful wel- 
come. 



SPEECHES IN ENGLAND. 



Reports, Published by the Union and Emancipation 
Society, Manchester, in 1863. 



NOTE. 

[Prefacing the Original Volume.] 



I HAVE been asked to revise the speeches recently deliv- 
ered by me in Great Britain, and to allow them to be 
published together. 

In compliance with that request, I have partially revised 
the speeches delivered in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 
in the City Hall, Glasgow, and in the Free Church Assem- 
bly Hall, Edinburgh; the others not at all. 

I must leave them with all the imperfections incidental 
to speeches delivered under circumstances, in several cases, 
not favorable to literary excellence or reportorial correct- 
ness. 

To avoid any mistake hereafter, I specify those speeches 
which, in addition to the above, I permit to be published; 
and this I deem necessary on account of one of my morning 
addresses having been so inaccurately reported (uninten- 
tionally, I believe) as to misrepresent what I did say and 
attribute to me that which I did not say. 

The speech in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, I leave 
as a curiosity. It may relieve the reading of the others, to 
follow the course of a speech delivered under difficulties. 

The speeches delivered in Exeter Hall, and at the several 
Breakfast Meetings in London, Manchester, and Liverpool, 
must remain as they are published in the newspapers, only 
with the caution that they are not verbatim reports. 

H. W. BEECHER. 

Liverpool, October 30, 1863. 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 

October 9, 1863. 



On Friday evening, October 9th, 1863, a meeting was held in 
tile Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England, according to an- 
nouncement, " to welcome the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher on his 
public appearance in this country." The hall was crowded, and 
there were probably 6,000 persons present. It was supposed, from 
the paper war of placards for the previous fortnight, that the 
meeting might be disturbed by partisans of the Confederate cause. 
Arrangements had, therefore, been made for the prompt suppres- 
sion of disorder; and notices to that effect were posted about the 
room. The chair was taken, at half-past six, by Mr. Francis 
Taylor. At the same time the entrance of Mr. Beecher, accom- 
panied by Mr. Bazley, M. P., and some prominent members of the 
Union and Emancipation Society, was the signal for enthusiastic 
and repeated cheering. 

After the reading of sundry letters of regret from Mr. John 
Bright and others, and some apt remarks by the chairman, a wel- 
coming Address by the Society was read, supported handsomely 
by Mr. Thomas Bazley, M. P., and seconded by Mr. J. H. Est- 
court, a gentleman to whose earnest friendship and untiring ef- 
forts Mr. Beecher owed much during this visit to England, in 
organized arrangements for' several of his addresses and a con- 
stant personal loyalty and advocacy. In the course of his brief 
remarks Mr. Estcourt said : 

He was reminded by the peculiar sounds in different parts of 
the hall, that other than friends were in attendance, and as the 
city had been placarded with bills containing an invitation to the 
citizens to attend this meeting in large numbers and give our es- 
teemed guest a "disgusting reception," he judged that the dis- 
cordant noises were the acknowledgment of these publicly invited 
persons that they had responded to the call, and were prepared to 
show the refinement of their manners by giving to a stranger to 
them, but a friend to humanity, the polite but novel reception, 
characterized by themselves as "disgusting"; he trusted, however, 
that those gentlemen would see that it would be better to avoid 



438 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

giving that sort of reception. He had no hesitation in saying 
that those on the other side of the Atlantic who were now fight- 
ing for constitutional government, and free speech, and personal, 
civil, social, political, and religious freedom, ought to have the 
moral support, and he believed they had, of every intelligent and 
well informed Englishman. [Loud applause^ He could not say 
how long it would take to convert and enlighten the unenlightened 
and uninformed portion of the community, who, in establishing 
the Southern Slav'eholding Association, had publicly acknowl- 
edged one of their objects to be to obtain " correct information ; " 
but inasmuch as the Union and Emancipation Society was estab- 
lished for the very purpose of supplying such information, he 
promised to all applicants that which they sought, and hoped 
they would be diligent in the acquisition of knowledge, and he 
sincerely trusted that before the year was out this class of the 
community would be sailing with them in one boat, in an intelli- 
gent English career, in favor of a liberty which was the un- 
doubted right of every man. [Loud applause] The meeting was 
not asked to indorse every word Mr. Beecher had said, but to 
manifest by its welcome, that everything he had done in promot- 
ing the extension of the broad principles of liberty, had its hearty 
approval. [Applause.] The mode of doing this must be left to 
Mr. Beecher himself, and he [Air. Estcourt] was quite sure there 
was not an Englishman in that crowded hall who did not sym- 
pathize and whollyapproveof a manly, moral, good man, wherever 
he was found, whether he be an American, an Englishman, or the 
citizen of any other nation. [Applause?^ He therefore, believing 
Mr. Beecher to be such a man, with the greatest pleasure seconded 
the adoption of the address. 

The Chairman then put the resolution, and thousands of hands 
were thrust up high above the heads of the dense audience. 
After an interval of loud cheers, the Chairman put the contrary, 
and amidst peals of derisive laughter and cheers a few hands were 
held up. 

The Chairman : I declare the resolution carried by an over- 
whelming majority. 

Mr. Beecher then turned to the audience to speak, but for sev- 
eral minutes he was prevented by deafening cheers, followed by 
a few hisses, which only provoked a renewed outburst of applause. 

Mr. Beecher then spoke: — 

Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, the address which 
you have kindly presented to me contains matters both 
personal and national. \l7iterruption^ My friends, we will 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 439 

have a whole night session but .we will be heard. \_Loud 
cheers?^ I have not come to England to be surprised that 
those men whose cause cannot bear the light are afraid of 
free speech. \Cheers^ I have had practice of more than 
twenty-five years in the presence of tumultuous assemblies 
opposing those very men whose representatives now at- 
tempt to forestall free speech. \IIear^ Little by little, I 
doubt not, I shall be permitted to speak to-night. [ZT-jar.] 
Little by little I have been permitted in my own country 
to speak, until at last the day has come there, when noth- 
ing but the utterance of speech for freedom is popular. 

You have been pleased to speak of me as one connected 
with the great cause of civil and religious liberty. I covet 
no higher honor than to have my name joined to the list 
of that great company of noble Englishmen from whom 
we derived our doctrines of liberty. \Cheers7[ For al- 
though there is some opposition to what are here called 
American ideas, what are these American ideas ? They 
are simply English ideas bearing fruit in America. We 
bring back American sheaves, but the seed-corn we got in 
England — [/lear]; and if, on a larger sphere, and under cir- 
cumstances of unobstruction, we have reared mightier 
harvests, every sheaf contains the grain that has made Old 
England rich for a hundred years. ^Great c/iecring.'\ I am 
also not a little gratified that my first appearance to speak 
on secular topics in England is in this goodly town of 
Manchester, for I would rather have praise from men who 
understand the quality praised, than from those who speak 
at hazard and with little knowledge of the thing praised. 
[^Hear.^ And where else, more than in these great central 
portions of England, and in what town more than Man- 
chester, have the doctrines of human rights been battled 
for, and where else have there been gained for them nobler 
victories than here ? \_Cheei-s.'\ It is not indiscriminate 
praise therefore: you know what you talk about. You have 
had practice in these doctrines yourselves, and to be praised 
by those who are illustrious is praise indeed. \^Cheers.'\ 

Allusion has been made by one of the gentlemen — a cau- 



44° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

tionary allusion, a kind of deference evidently paid to some 
supposed feeling — an allusion has been made to words or 
deeds of mine that might be supposed to be offensive 
to Englishmen. \Hear?[ I cannot say how that may be. 
I am sure that I have never thought, in the midst of this 
mighty struggle at home, which has taxed every power 
and energy of our people — ["6>/;," and cheers\ — I have 
never stopped to measure and to think whether my words 
spoken in truth and with fidelity to duty would be liked 
in this shape or in that shape by one or another person 
either in England or America. \Checrs^ I have had one 
simple, honest purpose, which I have pursued ever since I 
have been in public life, and that was with all the strength 
that God has given to me to maintain the cause of the 
poor and of the weak in my own country. [C/ieers.] And 
if, in the height and heat of conflict, some words have been 
over sharp, and some positions have been taken heedlessly, 
are you the men to call one to account ? [//car.] What 
if some exquisite dancing master, standing on the edge of 
a battle, where Richard Coeur de Lion swung his axe, 
criticised him by saying that " his gestures and postures 
violated the proprieties of polite life." [Lai/g/ifer.] When 
dandies fight they think how they look, but when men 
fight they think only of deeds. [C/ieers.] 

But I am not here either on trial or on defense, [//ear, 
hear.'] It matters not what I have said on other occasions 
and under different circumstances. Here I am before you, 
willing to tell you what I think about England, or any 
person in it. [Cheers.] Let me say one word, however, in 
regard to this meeting, and the peculiar gratification 
which I feel in it. The same agencies which have been at 
work to misrepresent good men in our country to you, 
have been at work to misrepresent to us good men here; 
and when I say to my friends in America that I have 
attended such a meeting as this, received such an address, 
and beheld such enthusiasm, it will be a renewed pledge 
of amity. [Cheers.] I have never ceased to feel that war, 
or even unkind feelings between two such great nations, 
would be one of the most unpardonable and atrocious 



♦ SPEECH nv MANCHESTER. 441 

offenses that the world ever beheld — \cheers\ — and I have 
regarded everything, therefore, which needlessly led to 
those feelings out of which war comes, as being in itself 
wicked. \Cheers^^ The same blood is in us. [C/ieers.] 
We are your children, or the children of your fathers and 
ancestors. You and we hold the same substantial doc- 
trines. We have the same mission amongst the nations of 
the earth. Never were mother and daughter set forth to 
do so queenly a thing in the kingdom of God's glory as 
England and America. [67/^t7x] Do you ask why we are 
so sensitive, and why have we hewn England with our 
"tongue as we have ? I will tell you why. There is no man 
who can offend you so deeply as the one you love most. 
[Loud cheers.~\ Men point to France and Napoleon, and 
say he has joined England in all that she has done, and 
why are the press of America silent against France, and 
why do they speak as they do against England? It is be- 
cause we love England. [C/icers.'\ 

I well remember the bitterness left by the war of our 
Independence, and the outbreak of the flame of 1812 from 
its embers. To hate England was in my boyhood almost 
the first lesson of patriotism; but that result of conflict 
gradually died away as peace brought forth its proper 
fruits: interests, reciprocal visits, the interchanges of 
Christian sympathy, and co-operative labors in a common 
cause lessened and finally removed ill-feelings. In their 
place began to arise affection and admiration. For when 
we searched our principles, they all ran back to rights 
wrought out and established in England; when we looked 
at those institutions of which we were most proud, we be- 
held that the very foundation stones were taken from the 
quarry of your history; when we looked for those men 
that had illustrated our own tongue, orators, or eloquent 
ministers of the gospel, they were English; we borrowed 
nothing from France, but here a fashion and there a ges- 
ture or a custom: while what we had to dignify humanity 
— that made life worth having — were all brought from 
Old England. [Cheers.'] And do 5^ou suppose that under 
such circumstances, with this growing love, with this 



442 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

growing pride, with this gladness to feel that we were 
being associated in the historic glory of England, it was 
with feelings of indifference that we beheld in our midst 
the heir-apparent to the British throne? \Cheers^ There 
is not reigning on the globe a sovereign who commands 
our simple, unpretentious, and unaffected respect, as does 
your own beloved Queen. \^Loud cheers^ I have heard 
multitudes of men say that it was their joy and their 
pleasure to pay respect to the Prince of Wales, even if he 
had not won personal sympathy, that his mother might 
know that through him the compliment was meant to her. 
[Loud cheers.^ It was an unarranged and unexpected" 
spontaneous and universal outbreak of popular enthusiasm; 
it began in the colonies of Canada, the fire rolled across 
the border, all through New England, all through New 
York and Ohio, down through Pennsylvania and the 
adjacent States; nor was the element quenched until it 
came to Richmond. I said, and many said — the past of 
enmity and prejudice is now rolled below the horizon of 
memory: a new era is come, and we have set our hand and 
voices as a sacred seal to our cordial affection and co- 
operation with England. {^Chcers.^ Now (whether we 
interpreted it aright or not, is not the question) when we 
thought England was seeking opportunity to go with the 
South against us of the North, it hurt us as no other 
nation's conduct could hurt us on the face of the globe; 
and if we spoke some words of intemperate heat, we 
spoke them in the mortification of disappointed affection. 
[C/ieers-l It has been supposed that I have aforetime 
urged or threatened war with England. Never ! This I 
have said — and this I repeat now, and here — that the 
cause of constitutional government and of universal lib- 
erty as associated with it in our country was so dear, so 
sacred, that rather than betray it we would give the last 
child we had — that we would not relinquish this conflict 
though other States rose, and entered into a league with 
the South — and that, if it were necessary, we would main- 
tain this great doctrine of representative government in 
America against the armed world — against England and 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 443 

France. \Great cheering, followed by some disturbance, i?i ref- 
erence to which the Chairman rose and cautioned an individual 
wider the gallery whom he had observed persisting in interrup- 
tion?^ 

Let me be permitted to say then, that it seems to me the 
darker days of embroilment between this country and 
America are past. \Cheers?\ The speech of Earl Russell 
at Blairgowrie, the stopping of those armed ships, and the 
present attitude of the British government [renewed cheer- 
ing'] will go far towards satisfying our people. Understand 
me; we do not accept Earl Russell's doctrine of belligerent 
rights nor of neutrality, as applied to the action of the 
British government and nation at the beginning of our 
civil war, as right doctrine, but we accept it as an accom- 
plished fact. We have drifted so far away from the time 
when it was profitable to discuss the questions of neu- 
trality or belligerency, and circumstances with you and 
with us are so much changed by the progress of the war, 
that we now only ask of the government strict neutrality 
and of the liberty-loving people of England moral sym- 
pathy. Nothing more ! We ask no help, and no hin- 
drance. \Resumed cheers.] If you do not send us a man, 
w^e do not ask for a man. If you do not send us another 
pound of powder, we are able to make our own powder. 
[Laughter.] If you do not send us another musket nor 
another cannon, we have cannon that will carry five miles 
already. [Laughter.] We do not ask for material help. 
We shall be grateful for moral sympathy; [cheers] but if 
you cannot give us moral sympathy we shall still endeavor 
to do without it. All that we say is, let France keep 
away, let England keep hands off; if we cannot manage 
this rebellion by ourselves, then let it be not managed at 
all. [Cheers.] 

We do not allow ourselves to doubt the issue of this 
conflict. It is only a question of time. For such inesti- 
mable principles as are at stake, — of self-government, of 
representative government, of any government at all, of 
free institutions rejected because they inevitably will bring 
liberty to slaves unless subverted; — of national honor, and 



444 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

fidelity to solemn national trusts, — for all these war is 
waged, and if by war these shall be secured, not one drop 
of blood will be wasted, not one life squandered. The 
suffering will have purchased a glorious future of incon- 
ceivable peace and happiness ! Nor do we deem the result 
doubtful. The population is in the North and West. The 
wealth is there. The popular intelligence of the country 
is there. There only is there an educated common people. 
[C/ieers.] The right doctrines of civil government are with 
the North. [C/teers, and a voice, " IV/iere's l/ie justice ?"] It 
will not be long, before one thing more will be with the 
North — Victory. [Lond and enthusiastic rounds of c/ieers.'\ 
Men on this side are impatient at the long delay; but if 
we can bear it, can't you? \^Laughter.'\ You are quite at 
ease \^^ Not yet "\, we are not. You are not materially 
affected in any such degree as many parts of our own land 
are. \^Cheers.'\ But if the day shall come in one year, 
in two years, or in ten years hence, when the old stars and 
stripes shall float over every State of America, — \_loud 
cheers, and some disturbance from one or two'\ — O, let him \the 
chief disturber^ have a chance. {^Laughter ^ I was saying, 
when interrupted by that sound from the other side of the 
hall, that if the day shall come, in one or five or ten years, , 
in which the old honored and historic banner shall float 
again over every State of the South; if the day shall come 
when that which was the accursed cause of this dire and 
atrocious war — slavery — shall be clone away — \cheers\, if 
the day shall have come, when through all the Gulf States 
there shall be liberty of speech, as there never has been — 
{cheers^ — when there shall be liberty of the press, as there 
never has been; when men shall have common schools to 
send their children to, which they never have had in the 
South; if the day shall come when the land shall not be 
parceled into gigantic plantations, in the hands of a few 
rich oligarchs — \loud cheers\, but shall be divided to honest 
farmers, every man owning his little — \_rene7ved cheers\, in 
short, if the day shall come when the simple ordinances, 
the fruition and privileges, of civil liberty, shall prevail in 
every part of the United States; — it will be worth all the 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 445 

dreadful blood, and tears, and woe. \_Loud cheers.l You 
are impatient; and yet God dwelleth in eternity, and has 
an infinite leisure to roll forward the affairs of men, not to 
suit the hot impatience of those who are but children of a 
day, and cannot wait or linger long, but according to the 
infinite circle on which He measures time and events ! He 
expedites or retards as it pleases him; and yet if He heard 
our cries or prayers, not thrice would the months revolve 
but peace would come. Yet the strong crying and prayers 
of millions have not brought peace, but only thickening 
war. We accept the Providence; the duty is plain. 
[^Cheers and interruption^ 

I repeat, the duty is plain. \Cheers?[ So rooted is this 
English people in the faith of liberty, that it were an 
utterly hopeless task for any minion or sympathizer of the 
South to sway the popular sympathy of England, if this 
English people believed that this was none other than a 
conflict between liberty and slavery. // is just that. \^Loud 
cheers^ The conflict may be masked by our institutions. 
Every people must shape public action through their laws 
and institutions. We often cannot reach an evil directly, 
but only circuitously, through the channels of law and 
custom. It is none the less a contest for liberty and 
against slavery, because it is primarily a conflict for the 
Union. It is by that Union, vivid with liberty, that we have 
to scourge oppression and establish liberty. Union, in the 
future, means justice, liberty, popular rights. Only slavery 
has hitherto prevented Union from bearing such fruit. 

Slavery was introduced into our country at a time, and in 
a manner, when neither England nor America knew well 
what were the results of that atrocious system. It was igno- 
rantly received and propagated on our side; little by little it 
spread through all the thirteen States that then were: for 
slavery in the beginning was in New England, as really as 
now it is in the Southern States. But when the great strug- 
gle for our independence came on, the study of the doctrines 
of human rights had made such progress that the whole 
public mind began to think it was wrong to wage war to 
defend our rights, while we were holding men in slavery. 



446 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

depriving them of theirs. It is an historical fact, that all 
the great and renowned men that flourished at the period 
of our revolution were abolitionists. Washington was; 
so was Benjamin Franklin; so was Thomas Jefferson; so 
was James Monroe; so were the principal Virginian and 
Southern statesmen, and the first abolition society ever 
founded in America was founded not in the North, but in 
the Middle and a portion of the Southern States. Before 
the War of Independence, slavery was decaying in the 
North, from moral and physical causes combined. It 
ceased in New England with the adoption of our constitu- 
tion [1787]. It has been unjustly said that they sold their- 
slaves, and preached a cheap emancipation to others. Slav- 
ery ceased in Massachusetts as follows : When suit was 
brought for the services of a slave, the Chief Justice laid 
down as law, that our Declaration of Independence, which 
pronounced all men "equal," and equally entitled to "life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," was itself a bill of 
emancipation, and he refused to yield up that slave for 
service. At a later period New York passed an Emanci- 
pation Act. It has been said that she sold her slaves. No 
slander was ever greater. The most careful provision was 
made against sale. No man traveling out of the State of 
New York after the passing of the Emancipation Act was 
permitted to have any slave with him, unless he gave 
bonds for his re-appearance with him. As a matter of 
fact the slaves were emancipated without compensation on 
the spot, to take effect gradually class by class. But after 
a trial of half a score of years the people found this grad- 
ual emancipation was intolerable. \Hear, hear.^ It was 
like gradual amputation. They therefore, by another act 
of legislation, declared immediate emancipation [/tear] and 
that took effect; and so slavery perished in the State of 
New York. [C/ieers.] Substantially so it was in New 
Jersey, and in Pennsylvania; never was there an example 
of States that emancipated slaves more purely from moral 
conviction of the wrong of slavery. 

I know that it is said that Northern capital and Northern 
ships were employed in the slave trade. To an extent it 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 447 

was so. But is there any community that lives, in which 
there are not miscreants who violate the public conscience ? 
\Chee)■s^^ Then and since, the man who dared to use his 
capital and his ships in this infamous traffic hid himself, 
and did by agents what he was ashamed to be known to 
have done himself. \^Hea)\\ Any man in the North who 
notoriously had part or lot in a trade so detested, would 
have been branded with the mark of Cain. \Cheers?^ It is 
true that the port of New York has been employed in this 
infernal traffic, but it was because it was under the influence 
either of that "Democratic" party that was then unfortu- 
nately in alliance with the Southern slavery — \Jiear, hear] — ■ 
or because it was under the dark political control of the 
South itself. For when the South could appoint our mar- 
shals, — could, through the national administration, control 
the appointment of every Federal officer, our collectors, 
and every custom-house officer, — how could it be but that 
slavery flourished in our harbors ? For years together New 
York has been as much controlled by the South, in matters 
relating to slavery, as Mobile or New Orleans ! But, even 
so, the slave trade was clandestine. It abhorred the light: 
it crept in and out of the harbor stealthily, despised and 
hated by the whole community. Is New York to be blamed 
for demoniac deeds done by her limbs while yet under pos- 
session of the devil ? She is now clothed, and in her right 
mind. [^Cheers.] There was one Judas; is Christianity 
therefore a hoax ? \^Hear.] There are hissing men in this 
audience; are you not respectable? \^Cheers and /atighter.] 
The folly of the few is that light which God casts to 
irradiate the wisdom of the many. l^Hea/'.] 

And let me say one word here about the Constitution of 
America. It recognizes slavery as a fact; but it does not 
recognize the doctrine of slavery in any way whatever. It 
was a fact; it lay before the ship of state, as a rock lies in 
the channel of the ship as she goes into harbor; and be- 
cause a ship steers round a rock, does it follow that that 
rock is in the ship ? [^Hear, hear.] And because the Con- 
stitution of the United States made some circuits to steer 
round that great fact, does it follow that therefore slavery 



448 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

is recognized in the Constitution as a right or a system ? 
[iV(?.] See how carefully that immortal document worded 
itself. In the slave laws the slave is declared to be — what ? 
Expressly, and by the most repetitious phraseology, he is 
denuded of all the attributes and characteristics of man- 
hood, and is pronounced a " chattel." \^Shame^ Now, you 
have just that same word in your farming language with 
the // left out, " cattle." {^Hear, hear?^ And the difference 
between cattle and chattel is the difference between quad- 
ruped and biped. \^Laiightcr^ So far as animate property 
is concerned, and so far as inanimate property is concerned, 
it is just the difference between locomotive property and 
stationary property. [ZTmr, hcari\ The laws in all the 
Slave States stand on the radical principle that a slave is not 
for purposes of law any longer to be ranked in the category 
of human beings, but that he is a piece of property, and is 
to be treated to all intents and purposes as a piece of prop- 
erty; and the law did not blush, nor do the judges blush 
nowadays who interpret that law. \^Hear^ But how 
does the Constitution of the United States, when it speaks 
of these same slaves, name them ? Does it call them chat- 
tels or slaves ? Nay, it refused even the softer words serf 
and servitude. Conscientiously aware of the dignity of man, 
and that service is not opposed to the grandeur of his nat- 
ure, it alludes to the slaves barely as persons (not chattels) 
held to service (not servitude). \^Hear and cheer s.'\ Go to 
South Carolina, and ask what she calls slaves, and her laws 
reply " They are things;'' but the old capitol at Washington 
sullenly reverberates, "No, persons!" [Cheers.] Goto 
Mississippi, the State of Jefferson Davis, and her funda- 
mental law pronounces the slave to be only a " thing; " 
and again, the Federal Constitution sounds back, "Per- 
sons!" Go to Louisiana and its constitution, and still that 
doctrine of devils is enunciated — it is " chattel," it is 
"thing." Looking upon those for whom Christ felt mortal 
anguish in Gethsemane, and stretched himself out for death 
on Calvary, their laws call them "things" and "chattels;" 
and still in tones of thunder the Constitution of the United 
States says " Persons! " The Slave States, by a definition. 



♦ SPEECH IN MA A'C HESTER. 449 

annihilate manhood; the Constitution, by a word, brings 
back the slave to the human family. \^C/ieers.'\ 

What was it then, when the country had advanced so far 
towards universal emancipation in the period of our na- 
tional formation, that stopped this onward tide? Two 
things, commercial and political. First, the wonderful de- 
mand for cotton throughout the world, precisely when, 
from the invention of the cotton gin, it became easy to 
turn it to service. Slaves that before had been worth from 
three to four hundred dollars began to be worth six hun- 
dred dollars. That knocked away one-third of adherence 
to the moral law. Then they became worth seven hundred 
dollars, and half the law \vtnt[^c/ieers and lan.g/itcr'\\ then 
eight or nine hundred dollars, and then there was no such 
thing as moral law {^c/iceis and laughter^ ; then one thou- 
sand or twelve hundred dollars, and slavery became 
one of the beatitudes. SjOheers ami laiig/ifer.^ The other 
cause, which checked the progress of emancipation that 
had already so auspiciously begun, was political. It is 
very singular, that, in what are called the "compromises" 
of the Constitution, the North, while attempting to prevent 
advantage to slavery, gave to the slave power the peculiar 
advantage which it has had ever since. In Congress the 
question early arose. How should the revenue be raised in 
the United States? For a long time it was proposed, and 
there was an endeavor, to raise it by a tax upon all the cul- 
tivated land in the different States. When this was found 
unjust and unequal, the next proposal was to raise taxes 
on the " polls," or heads of the voters, in the different 
States. That was to be the basis of the calculation upon 
which taxes should be apportioned. Now when that ques- 
tion came up, it was said that it was not right to levy Fed- 
eral taxes upon the Indians in Georgia, who paid no taxes 
to the Georgian state exchequer. So the North consented; 
but in making up the list of men to be taxed, and exclud- 
ing the Indians, it insisted that the slaves should, neverthe- 
less, be included. That is to say, if Georgia was to pay to 
the Federal exchequer in proportion to her population, it 
was the interest of the North that her population should 



45° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

be swelled by counting all her slaves. There was a long 
debate on this subject; and not to detain you with all the 
turns on this matter, the two things were coupled together 
at last — representation and taxation. \^Hcar?^ Their eyes 
being fixed solely upon the assessment of taxes, it was 
agreed that five slaves should count as three men, and that 
it was supposed would give some advantage to the North 
against slavery. But in a very few years the government 
ceased to raise taxation by " poll," and raised it by tariff. 
Thenceforward, as representatives had to be chosen in the 
same way, and as five slaves counted as three white men, 
the South has had the advantage; and it has come to this 
point, that while in the North representatives represent 
men, in the South representatives stand for men and prop- 
erty together. 

I want to drop a word as an egg for you to brood over. 
It will illustrate the policy of the South. The proposition 
to make a government undeniably National, as distinct 
from a mere Confederacy, came from Virginia and South 
Carolina. The North, having more individuality, was 
jealous of yielding up the rights of the separate States; 
but the South, with the love of power characteristic of the 
Normans, wanted to have a National government in dis- 
tinction to a Union of several states. In result, when the 
national government was established, the South came into 
power; and for fifty years everything that the South said 
should be done has been done, and whatever she said 
should not be done has not been done. The institutions of 
America were shaped by the North; but thcpoiicy of her gov- 
ernment, for half a hundred years, by the South. All the 
aggression and filibustering, all the threats to England and 
tauntings of Europe, all the bluster of war which our gov- 
ernment has assumed, have been under the inspiration and 
under the almost monarchical sway of the Southern oli- 
garch)'". \^Loud cheering.'] And now, since Britain has been 
snubbed by the Southerners, and threatened by the South- 
erners, and domineered over by the Southerners — ["iV^c"] 
— yet now Great Britain has thrown her arms of love 
around the Southerners and turns from the Northerners. 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 45 1 

["A^f."] She don't ? \CheersP\^ I have only to say that she 
has been caught in very suspicious circumstances. \_Laugh- 
ter?[ I so speak, perhaps as much as anything else, for 
this very sake— to bring out from you this expression — to 
let jiw/ know whatzct' know, that all the hostility felt in my 
country towards Great Britain has been sudden, and from 
supposing that you sided with the South, and sought the 
breaking up of our country; and I want you to say to 
me, and through me to my countrymen, that those irrita- 
tions against the North, and those likings for the South, 
that have been expressed in your papers, are not the feel- 
ings of the great mass of your nation. \Grcat cheering^ 
the audience rising?^ Those cheers already sound in my ears 
as the coming acclamations of friendly nations — those 
waving handkerchiefs are the white banners that sym- 
bolize peace for all countries. \Cheers?^ Join with us then, 
Britons. \Chcers^ From you we learnt the doctrine of 
what a man was worth; from you we learnt to detest all 
oppressions; from you we learnt that it was the noblest 
thing a man could do to die for a right principle. 
\Cheers^ And now, when we are set in that very course, 
and are giving our best blood for the most sacred princi- 
ples, let the world understand that the common people of 
Great Britain support us. \Chcers^ 

You have been pleased to say in this address that I have 
been one of the "pioneers." No. I am only one of their 
eldest sons. The Birneys, the Baileys, the Rankins, the 
Dickeys, the Thoms of the West, the Garrisons, the 
Quincys, the Slades, the Welds, the Stewarts, the Smiths, 
the Tappans, the Goodalls of the East, and unnamed hun- 
dreds more, these were indeed pioneers. I unloosed the 
shoe-latchets of the pioneers, and that is all: I was but 
little more than a boy: I bear witness, that the hardest 
blows and the most cruel sufferings were endured by men, 
before I was thrust far enough into public life to take any 
particular share; and I do not consider myself entitled to 
rank amongst the pioneers. They were better men than I. 
Those noble men did resist this downward tendency of 
the North. They were rejected by society. To be called 



452 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

an abolitionist excluded a man from respectable society 
in those days. To be called an abolitionist blighted any 
man's prospects in political life. To be called an aboli- 
tionist marked a man's store,— his very customers avoided 
him as if he had the plague. To be called an abolitionist 
in those days shut up the doors of confidence from him in 
the church; where he was regarded as a disturber of the 
peace. Nevertheless, the witnesses for liberty maintained 
their testimony. \^Loud cheersi\ Little by little, they reached 
the conscience, — they gained the understanding. And as, 
when old Luther spoke, thundering in the ears of Europe 
the long buried treasures of the Bible, there were hosts 
against him, yet the elect few gathered little by little, and 
became no longer few; just so did many a Luther among 
ourselves thunder forth a long buried truth from God, the 
essential right of human liberty; and these were followed 
for half a score of years, until they began to be/iumerous 
enough to be an influential party in the state elections. 
[C//<?rrj-.] In 1848, I think it was, that the Buffalo platform 
was laid. It was the first endeavor in the Northern States 
to form a platform that should carry rebuke to the slave- 
holding ideas in the North. 

Before this, however, I can say that, under God, the 
South itself had unintentionally done more than we, to 
bring on this work of emancipation. \^Hear, hear.'\ First 
they began to declare, after the days of Mr. Calhoun, that 
they accepted slavery no longer as a misfortune, but as a 
divine blessing. Mr. Calhoun advanced the doctrine, which 
is now the marrow of secession, that it was the duty of 
the general government not merely to protect the local 
States from interference but to make, slavery equally fia- 
tional with liberty ! In effect, the government was to see 
to it, that slavery received equivalents for every loss and 
disadvantage, which, by the laws of nature, it must sustain 
in a race against free institutions. \Cheers^ These mon- 
strous doctrines began to be the development of future 
ambitions. The South, having the control of government, 
knew from the inherent weakness of their system, that, if 
it were confined, it was like huge herds feeding on small 



SPEECH EV MANCHESTER. 453 

pastures, that soon gnaw the grass to the roots, and must 
have other pasture or die. \^C7ieers.^ Slavery is of such a 
nature, that if you do not give it continual change of feed- 
ing ground, it perishes. \^Renewed c/weriiig.^ And then 
came one after another from the South assertions of rights 
never before dreamed of. From them came the Mexican 
war for territory; from them came the annexation of Texas 
and its entrance as a slave state; from them came that or- 
ganized rowdyism in Congress that browbeat every North- 
ern man who had not sworn fealty to slavery; that filled 
all the courts of Europe with ministers holding slave doc- 
trines; that gave the majority of the seats on the bench to 
slave-owning judges; and that gave, in fact, all our chief 
offices of trust either to slave-owners, or to men who licked 
the feet of slave-owners. \^Loiid cheers^ Then came that 
ever- memorable period when, for the very purpose of 
humbling the North, and making it drink the bitter cup of 
humiliation, and showing to its people that the South was 
their natural lord, was passed the Fugitive Slave Bill. 
\^Loud hisses?\^ There was no need of that. There was al- 
ready existing just as good an instrument for so infernal a 
purpose as any fiend could have wished. Against that in- 
famy my soul revolted, and these lips protested, and I 
defied the government to its face and told them " I will 
execute none of your unrighteous laws; send to me a fugi- 
tive who is fleeing from his master, and I will step between 
him and his pursuer." \^Loiid and p7-olonged cheers?^ Not 
once, nor twice, have my doors been shut between oppres- 
sion and the oppressed; and the church itself over which 
I minister has been the unknown refuge of many and many 
a one. \Chcers^^ 

But whom the devil entices he cheats. Our promised 
" peace " with the South, which was the thirty pieces of 
silver paid to us, turned into fire and burnt the hands 
that took it. For, how long was it after this promised 
peace that the Missouri compromise was abolished in an 
infamous disregard of solemn compact.? \_Loud cheers^ It 
never ought to have been made; but having been made, it 
ought never to have been broken by the South. [C/ieers.] 



454 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

And with no other pretense than the robber's pretense that 
might makes right, they did destroy it, that they might 
carry slavery far North. That sufficed. That alone was 
needed to arouse the long reluctant patriotism of the 
North. [C/ieers.^ In hope that /ime would curb and de- 
stroy slavery, that forbearance would lead to like forbear- 
ance, the North had suffered insult, wrong, political 
treachery, and risk to her very institutions of liberty. By 
the abolition of this compromise another slave state was 
immediately to have been brought into the Union to bal- 
ance' the ever growing free territories of the Northwest. 
Then arose a majesty of self-sacrifice that had no parallel 
before. Instead of merely protesting, young men and 
maidens, laboring men, farmers, mechanics, sped with 
a sacred desire to rescue free territory from the toils of 
slavery; and emigrated in thousands, not to better their 
own condition, but in order that, when this territory should 
vote, it should vote as a free state. \^Loiid cheers.^ Never 
was a worse system of cheating practiced than the perjury, 
intimidation, and prostituted use of the United States 
army, by which the South sought to force a vile institu- 
tion upon the men who had voted almost unanimously for 
liberty and against slavery in Kansas. [Utar.] But at 
last the day of utter darkness had passed, and the gray 
twilight was on the morning horizon. At length (for the 
first time, I believe, in the whole conflict between the South 
and the North) the victory went to the North, and Kansas 
became a free state. [C/ieers.^ 

Now I call you to witness, that in a period of twenty- 
five or thirty years of constant conflicts at every single 
step the South gained the political advantage, with the 
single exception of Kansas. What was the conduct of the 
North? Did it take any steps for secession ? Did it threaten 
violence? So sure were the men of the North of the ulti- 
mate triumph of that which was Right, p7-ovided free speech 
%vas left to combat error and wrong, that they patiently 
bided their time. By this time the North was cured alike 
of love for slavery and of indifference. By this time a new 
conscience had been formed in the North, and a vast ma- 



I 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 455 

jority of all the Northern men at length stood fair and 
square on anti-slavery doctrine. [C/ieers.] 

We next had to flounder through the quicksands of four 
infamous years under President Buchanan, in which sena- 
tors, sworn to the constitution, were plotting to destroy that 
constitution; — in which the members of the cabinet, who 
drew their pay month by month, used their official posi- 
tion, by breach of public trust and oath of allegiance, to 
steal arms, to prepare fortifications, and make ready dis- 
ruption and war. The most astounding spectacle that the 
world ever saw was then witnessed — a great people paying 
men to sit in the places of power and office to betray them. 
[J/ear, //£ar.] During all those four years what did we ? 
We protested and waited, and said: "God shall give us 
the victory. It is God's truth that we wield, and in his 
own good time, He will give us the victory." \^Great cheer- 
ingi\ In all this time we never made an inroad on the 
rights of the South. \Cheel's^^ We never asked for retali- 
atory law. We never taxed their commerce, or touched 
it with our little finger. We envied them none of their 
manufactures; but sought to promote them. We did not 
attempt to abate, by one ounce, their material prosperity; 
we longed for their prosperity. \Chee7's.^ Slavery we 
always hated; the Southern men never. \Cheers^ They 
were wrong. And in our conflicts with them we have felt 
as all men in conflict feel. We were jealous, and so were 
they. Wc were in the right cause; they in the wrong. 
We were right, or liberty is a delusion; they were wrong, 
or slavery is a blessing. \Chcers?[ We never envied them 
their territory; and it was the faith of the whole North, 
that, in seeking for the abatement of slavery, and its final 
abolition, we were conferring upon the South itself the 
greatest boon which one nation — or part of a nation — 
could confer upon another. That she was to pass through 
difficulties in her transition to free labor, I had no doubt; 
but it was not in our heart to humble her, but rather to 
help and sympathize with her. I defy time and history to 
point to a more honorable conduct than that of the free 
North towards the South during all these days. 



456 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

In i860, Mr. Lincoln was elected. \Cheers?^ I ask you 
to take notice of the conduct of the two sides at this point. 
For thirty years we had been experiencing sectional defeats 
at the hands of the Southerners. For thirty years and 
more we had seen our sons proscribed because loyal to lib- 
erty, or worse than proscribed — suborned and made sub- 
servient to slavery. \Cheers?^ We had seen our judges 
corrupt, our ministers apostate, our merchants running 
headlong after gold against principle; but we maintained 
fealty to the law and to the constitution, and had faith in 
victory by legitimate means. But when, by the means 
pointed out in the constitution, and sanctified by the usage 
of three-quarters of a century, Mr. Lincoln, in fair open 
field was elected President of the United States, did the 
South submit ? \Cries of "iW;," and cheers^ No offense 
had been committed — none threatened; but the allegation 
was, that the election of a man known to be pledged against 
the extension of slavery was not compatible with the safety 
of slavery as it existed. On that ground they took steps for 
secession. Every honest mode to prevent it, all patience 
on the part of the North, all pusillanimity on the part of 
Mr. Buchanan, were anxiously employed. Before his suc- 
cessor came into office, he left nothing undone to make 
matters worse, did nothing to make things better. The 
North was patient then, the South impatient. Soon came 
the issue. The question was put to the South, and with the 
exception of South Carolina, cilery State in the South gave a pop- 
ular vote against secession; and yet, such was the jugglery of 
political leaders, that before a few months had passed, they 
had precipitated every State into secession. That never 
could have occurred had there been in the Southern States 
an educated common people. But the slave power cheats the 
poor whites of intelligence, in order to rob the poor blacks. 
This is important testimony to the nature and tendency of 
the Union and Government of the United States; and re- 
veals clearly, by the judgment of the very men who of all 
others best know, that to maintain the Union is, in the end, 
to destroy slavery. It justifies the North against the slan- 
ders of those'who declare that she is not fighting for liberty. 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 457 

but only for the Union — as if that were not the very way 
to destroy slavery and establish freedom ! The government 
of the United States is such that, if it be administered 
equitably, in the long run it will destroy slavery; and it 
was the foresight of this which led the South to its precip- 
itate secession. \Chcers?\ 

Against all these facts, it is attempted to make England 
believe that slavery has had nothing to do with this war. 
You might as well have attempted to persuade Noah that 
the clouds had nothing to do with the flood; it is the most 
monstrous absurdity ever born from the womb of folly. 
\Chcers?[ Nothing to do with slavery ? It had to do with 
nothing else. \Checrs?[ Against this withering fact — 
against this damning allegation — what is their escape ? 
They reply — the North is just as bad as the South. Now 
we are coming to the marrow of it. If the North is as bad 
as the South, why did not the South find it out before you 
did ? If the North had been in favor of oppressing the 
black man, and just as much in favor of slavery as the 
South, how is it that the South has gone to war against 
the North because of their belief to the contrary ? Gen- 
tlemen, I hold in my hand a published report of the speech 
of the amiable, intelligent and credulous President, I be- 
lieve, of the (English) Society for Southern Independence. 
YLaiighteri\ There are some curiosities in it. \^Laught€r^^ 
That you may know that Southerners are not all dead yet, 
I will read a paragraph: — 

The South had labored hitherto under the imputation, and it 
had constantly been thrown in the teeth of all who supported 
that struggling nation, that they by their proceedings were tend- 
ing to support the existence of slavery. This was an impression 
which he thought they ought carefully to endeavor to remove — 
[cheers a7id laughter] — because it was one which was injurious to 
their cause — [cheers'] — not only among those who had the feeling 
of all Englishmen — of a horror of slavery — but, also, because strong 
religious bodies in this country made a point of it, and felt it very 
strongly indeed. 

\^C7ieers.'\ I never like to speak behind a man's back — I like 
to speak to men's faces what I have to say — and I could 
wish that the happiness had been accorded to me to-night 



458 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to have Lord Wharncliffe present, that I might address 
to him a few simple Christian inquiries. \Cheers^ For 
there can be no question that there is a strong impression 
that the South has "supported the existence of slavery." 
\Chcers7[ Indeed, on our side of the water there are many 
persons that affirm it. \_Laughter and cheers^ And, as his 
lordship thinks that it is the peculiar duty of the new as- 
sociation to do away with that sad error, I beg to submit to 
it, that in the first place it ought to do away with four 
million slaves in the South; for there are uncharitable men 
living who think that a nation that has four million slaves 
has at least some " tendency " to support slavery. \Cheers^ 
And when his lordship's association has done that, it might 
be pertinent to suggest to him, instantly to revise the new 
" Montgomery Constitution " of the South, which is changed 
from the old Federal Constitution in only one or two points. 
The most essential point is that // for the first time intro- 
duces and legalizes slavery as a national institution, and makes 
it unconstitutional ever to do it away. Now, I submit, that 
this wants polishing a little. \Cheers?^ Then I would also 
respectfully lay at his lordship's feet — more beautifully 
engrossed, if I could, than is this address to me — the speech 
of Vice-President Stephens \Jiear, hcar\ in which he de- 
clares that all nations have been mistaken, and that to 
trample on the manhood of an inferior race is the only 
proper way to maintain the liberty of a superior; in which 
he lays down to Calvary a new lesson; in which he gives 
the lie to the Saviour himself, who came to teach us, that 
by as much as a man is stronger than another, he owes 
himself to that other. \^Loud cheers^ Not alone are Christ's 
blood-drops our salvation, but those word-drops of sacred 
truth, which cleanse the heart and conscience by precious 
principles, these also are to us salvation; and if there be in 
the truths of Christ one more eminent than another, it is, 
" He that would be chief, let him be the servant of all." But 
this audacious hierarch of an anti-Christian gospel, Mr. 
Stephens, — in the face of God, and to the ears of all man- 
kind, in this day of all but universal Christian sentiment, 
pronounces that for a nation to have manhood, it must 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 459 

crush out the liberty of an inferior and weaker race. And 
he declares ostentatiously and boastingly that the founda- 
tion of the Southern republic is on that corner stone. 
\^Loud cheers, ''''No^ no," and renewed cheers.^ When next Lord 
Wharncliffe speaks for the edification of this English peo- 
ple \Jai(g/ifer'\ I beg leave to submit that this speech of 
Mr. Stephens's requires more than a little polishing; in fact, 
a little scouring, cleansing, and flooding. \^Applause.'\ And 
if all the other crimson evidences that the South is uphold- 
ing slavery are to be washed pure by the new association, 
not Hercules in the Augean stable had such a task before 
him as they have got. yLoud e//eers.~\ Lord Wharncliffe 
may bid farewell to the sweets of domestic leisure and to 
the interests of state. All his amusement hereafter must 
be derived from the endeavor to purge the Southern cause 
of the universal conviction that, " by their proceedings, 
they are tending to support the existence of slavery." 
[Land e/ieers.~\ But there is another paragraph that I will 
read: — 

He believed that the strongest supporters of slavery were the 
merchants of New York and Boston. He always understood, 
and had never seen the statement contradicted, that the whole of 
the ships fitted out for the transport of slaves from Africa to 
Cuba were owned by Northerners. 

His lordship, if he will do me the honor to read my speech, 
shall hear it contradicted in most explicit terms. There 
have been enough Northern ships engaged, but not by any 
means all, nor the most. Baltimore has a preeminence in 
that matter; Charleston, and New Orleans, and Mobile, all 
of them. And those ships fitted out in New York were 
just as much despised, and loathed, and hissed by the hon- 
orable merchants of that great metropolis, as if they had 
put up the black flag of piracy. \^Loud cheers.'] Does it 
conduce to good feeling between two nations to utter 
slanders such as these ? His lordship goes on to say that — 

In the Northern States the slave is placed in even a worse 
position than in the South. He spoke from experience, having 
visited the country twice. 



460 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

I am most surprised, and yet gratified, to learn that Lord 
Wharncliffe speaks of the suffering of the slave from ex- 
perience. l^Lai/ghter and cheers.^ I never was aware that 
he had been put in that unhappy situation. Has he toiled 
on the sugar plantation ? Has he taken the night for his 
friend, avoiding the day? Has he sped through cane 
brakes, hunted by hounds, suffering hunger, and heat, and 
cold by turns, until he has made his way to the far North- 
ern States ? [C/ieers.] Has he had this experience ? It is 
the word experience I call attention to. If his lordship says 
that it is his observation, I will accept the correction. 

I continue: — 

In railway carriages and hotels, the negroes were treated as 
pariahs and outcasts and never looked upon as men and brothers, 
but rather as dogs. \Cheers.\ 

In all railway cars where Southerners travel, in all hotels 
where Southerners' money was the chief support, this is 
true. But I concede most frankly, that there has been oc- 
casion for such a statement: there has been a vicious prej- 
udice in the North against the negro. It has been part of 
my duty for the last sixteen years to protest against it. No 
decently dressed and well-behaved colored man has ever 
had molestation or question on entering my church, and 
taking any seat he pleases; not because I had influence 
with my people to prevent it, but because God gave me a 
people whose own good sense and conscience led them 
aright without me. But from this vantage ground it has 
been my duty to mark out the unrighteous prejudice from 
which the colored people have suffered in the North; and 
it is a part of the great moral revolution which is going 
on, that the prejudices have been in a great measure van- 
quished, and are now well nigh trodden down. In the city 
of New York there is one street railroad where colored 
people cannot ride, but in the others they may, and in all the 
railroads of New England there is not one in which a col- 
ored man would be questioned. I believe that the colored 
man may start from the line of the British dominions in 
the North and traverse all New England and New York 
till he touches the waters of the Western lakes and never 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 461 

be molested or questioned, passing on as any decent white 
man would pass. But let me ask you how came there to 
be these prejudices? They did not exist before the War 
of Independence. How did they grow up ? As one of 
the accursed offshoots of slavery. Where you make a race 
contemptible by oppression, all that belong to that race 
will participate in the odium, whether they be free or 
slave. The South itself, by maintaining the oppres- 
sive institution, is the guilty cause of whatever insult the 
free African has had to endure in the North. How next 
did that prejudice grow strong ? It was on account of the 
multitude of Irishmen who came to the States. \Cheers 
and interruption^^ I declare my admiration for the Irish 
people, who have illustrated the page of history in every 
department of society. It is part of the fruit of igno- 
rance, and, as they allege, of the oppression which they 
have suffered — that it has made them oppressors. I bear 
witness that there is no class of people in America, who 
are so bitter against the colored people, and so eager for 
slavery, as the ignorant, the poor, uninstructed Irishmen. 
["6^//," and ^^Hear," and '^ Three cheers for old IrclandT^ 

But although there have been wrongs done to them in 
the North, the condition of the free colored people in the 
North is unspeakably better than in the South. They 
own their wives and children. \^Hear^ hear.'\ They have 
the right to select their place and their kind of labor; 
their rights of property are protected just as much as ours 
are. The right of education is accorded to them. There 
is in the city of New York more than ten million of dol- 
lars of property owned by free colored people. \^Hear.'\ 
They have their own schools; they have their own churches; 
their own orators, and there is no more gifted man, and 
no man whose superb eloquence more deserves to be lis- 
tened to, than Frederick Douglass. [^Loiid cheers.'] Further: 
after the breaking out of this war, the good conduct of 
the slaves at the South and of the free colored people at 
the North has increased the kind feelings of the whites 
towards them; and since they have begun to fight for their 
lights of manhood, a popular enthusiasm for them is aris- 



462 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ing. \Loud cheers^ I will venture to say, that there is no 
place on the earth where millions of colored people stand 
in a position so auspicious for the future, as the free col- 
ored men of the North and the freed slaves of the South. 
\Chcers.^ 

I meant to have said a good deal more to you than I 
have said or than I shall have time to say. ["6^<? c-*;/."] I 
have endeavored to place before you some of the facts 
which show that slavery was the real cause of this war, and 
that if it had to be legally decided whether North or South 
were guilty in this matter, there could be no question be- 
fore any honorable tribunal, any jury, any deliberative 
body, that the South, from beginning to end, for the sake 
of slavery, has been aggressive, and the North patient. 
Since the war broke out, the North has been more and 
more coming upon the high ground of moral principle, 
until at length the government has decreed emancipation. 
It has been said very often in my hearing, and I have read 
it oftener since I have been in England — the last reading I 
had of it was from the pen of Lord Brougham — that the 
North is fighting for the Union, and not for the emancipa- 
tion of the African. Why are we fighting for the Union, 
but because we believe that the Union and its government, 
administered noiv by Northcrti men, will work out the eman- 
cipation of every living being on the continent of America? 
\_Loitd cheering.^ If it be meant that the North went into 
this war with the immediate object of the emancipation of 
the slaves, I answer that it never professed to do that ; but 
it went into war for the Union with the distinct and ex- 
pressed conviction on both sides, that, if the Union were main- 
tained, slavery could not live long. [^C/ieers.'\ Do you sup- 
pose that it is wise to separate the interest of the slave from 
the interest of the other people on the continent, and to 
inaugurate a policy which takes in him alone? He must 
stand or fall with all of us, [^liear, Aear,] and the only 
sound policy for the North is that which shall benefit the 
North, the South, the blacks and the whites. [C/ieers.] We 
hold that the maintenance of the Union as expounded in 
its fundamental principles by the Declaration of Independ- 



SPEECH IN MANCHESTER. 463 

ence and the Constitution, is the very best way to secure to 
the African ultimately his rights and his best estate. The 
North was like a ship carrying passengers, tempest tossed, 
and while the sailors were laboring, and the captain and 
officers directing, some grumblers came up from amongst 
the passengers and said, " You are all the time working to 
save the ship, but you don't care to save the passengers." 
I should like to know how you would save the passengers 
so well as by taking care of the ship. 

[At this point the Chairman read to the meeting a telegram 
relative to the seizure and detention by the Government of the 
rams prepared for the Southerners at Liverpool. The effect was 
startling. The audience rose to their feet, while cheer after cheer 
was given.] 

Allow me to say this of the colored people, our citizens 
(for in New York colored people vote, as they do also in 
Massachusetts and in several other Northern States — 
Lord Wharncliffe notwithstanding): it is a subject of 
universal remark, that no men on either side have carried 
themselves more gallantly, more bravely, than the colored 
regiments that have been fighting for their government 
and their liberty. My own youngest brother is colonel of 
one of those regiments, and from him I learn many most 
interesting facts concerning them. The son of one of the 
most estimable and endeared of my friends in my congre- 
gation was the colonel of the regiment which scaled the 
rampart of Fort Wagner. Colonel Shaw fell at the head 
of his men — hundreds fell — and when inquest was made 
for his body, it was reported by the Southern men in the 
fort that he had been "buried with his niggers;" and on 
his gravestone yet it shall be written, " The man that dared 
to lead the poor and the oppressed out of their oppression, 
died with them and for them, and was buried with them." 
\Cheeys?^ On the Mississippi the conduct of the Federal 
colored regiments is so good, that, although many of the 
officers who command them are Southern born, and until 
recently had the strongest Southern prejudices, those prej- 
udices are almost entirely broken down, and there is no 
difficulty whatever in finding officers, Northern or South- 



464 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ern, to take command of just as many of these regiments 
as can be raised. It is an honorable testimony to the good 
conduct and courage of these long-abused men, whom God 
is now bringing by the Red Sea of war out of the land of 
Egypt and into the land of promise. \Chcersi\ 

I have said that it would give me great pleasure to an- 
swer any courteous questions that might be proposed to 
me. If I cannot answer them I will do the next best 
thing, — tell you so. \^Hear^ The length to which this 
meeting has been protracted, and the very great con- 
viction that I seem to have wrought by my remarks on 
this Pentecostal occasion in yonder Gentile crowd — \loud 
lai/g/itcr~\ — admonish me that we had better open some 
kind of "meeting of inquiry." \_Reneived laughter^ It will 
give me great pleasure, as a gentleman, to receive ques- 
tions from any gentleman — \Jiear, hear^ — and to give such 
reply as is in my power. 

Mr. Beecher remained standing for a few moments, as if to give 
the opportunity of interrogation, but no one rising to question 
him, he sat down amidst great cheers. The speech lasted nearly 
two and a quarter hours. 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 

October 13, 1863. 



The hour appointed for the opening of proceedings was seven 
o'clock, and long before that time the hall was filled to excess by 
a crowd that waited in silence till the entrance of the speaker of 
the evening on the platform, accompanied by Bailie Govan, chair- 
man, and a number of clergymen and city councilors. 

After brief introductory remarks by Bailie Govan and 
the Rev. Dr. Anderson, Mr. Beecher spoke: — 

Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen: No one who has 
been born and reared in Scotland can know the feeling 
with which, for the first time, such a one as I have visited 
this land, classic in song and in history. I have been reared 
in a country whose history is brief. So vast is it, that one 
might travel night and day for all the week, and yet 
scarcely touch historic ground. Its history is yet to be 
written; yet to be acted. But I come to this land, which, 
though small, is as full of memories as the heaven is of 
stars, and almost as bright. \^App/ai/st\~\ There is not the 
most insignificant piece of water that does not make my 
heart thrill with some story of heroism, or some remem- 
bered poem; for not only has Scotland had the good fort- 
une to have had men that knew how to make heroic his- 
tory, but she has reared those bards who have known 
how to sing her fame. ^Applause.'] And every steep and 
every valley, and almost every single league on which my 
feet have trod, have made me feel as if I was walking in a 
dream. I never expected to feel my eyes overflow with 
tears of gladness, that I had been permitted in the prime 
of life to look upon dear old Scotland. [^AppIause.'] For 
your historians have taught us history, your poets have 
been the charm of our firesides, your theologians have en- 
riched our libraries; from your philosophers — Reid, Brown, 



466 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and Stewart — we have derived the elements of our phi- 
losophy, and your scientific researches have greatly stim- 
ulated the study of science in our land. I come to Scot- 
land, almost as a pilgrim would to Jerusalem, to see those 
scenes whose story had stirred my imagination from my 
earliest youth; and I can pay no higher compliment than 
to say that having seen some part of Scotland I am satis- 
fied; and permit me to say that if, when you know me, you 
are a thousandth part as satisfied with me as I am with 
you, we shall get along very well together. \^Applaiisei\ 

And yet, although I am not of a yielding mood \a 
laitgJi\ nor easily daunted, I have some embarrassment in 
speaking to you to-night. I know very well that there are 
not a few things which prevent me doing a good work 
among you. I differ greatly from many of you. I re- 
spect, although I will not adopt, your opinions. I can 
only ask as much from you for myself. I am aware that 
a personal prejudice has been diligently excited against 
me. There is also the vastness of the subject on which I 
am about to speak, and the dissimilar institutions of the 
two countries, which stand in my way. There are also 
those perplexities which arise from conflicting statements 
made to you. There is also a supposed antagonism be- 
tween British and American interests. Now I shall not 
consider any of these points to-night except the first. It 
is not a pleasant avenue to a speech for a man to walk 
through himself. \^Laughtcr?^ But since every pains is 
taken to misrepresent me, let me once for all deal with 
that matter. 

In my own land I have been the subject of misrepre- 
sentation and abuse so long, that when I did not receive 
it, I felt as though something was wanting in the atmos- 
phere. \_Laughter and applause. ~\ I have been the object of 
misrepresentation at home, simply and only because I have 
been arrayed ever since I had a voice to speak and a heart 
to feel — body and soul, I have been arrayed, without re- 
gard to consequences and to my own reputation or my 
own ease, against that which I consider the damning sin 
of my country and the shame of human nature — slavery. 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 467 

\Great applause?^ I thought I had a right, when I came to 
Great Britain, to expect a different feception; but I found 
that the insidious correspondence of men in America had 
poisoned the British mind, and that representations had 
been made which predisposed men to receive me with dis- 
like. And, principally, the representations were that I 
had indulged in the most offensive language, and had 
threatened all sorts of things, against Great Britain. Now 
allow me to say that, having examined that interesting lit- 
erature, so far as I have seen it published in British news- 
papers, I here declare that ninety-nine out of one hundred 
parts of those things that I am charged with saying I 
never said and never thought — they are falsehoods wholly, 
and in particular. \Great applause.~\ Allow me next to say 
that I have been accustomed freely, and at all times, at 
home to speak what I thought to be sober truth both of 
blame and of praise of Great Britain, and if you do not 
want to hear a man express his honest sentiments fear- 
lessly, then I do not want to speak to you. \^Applaus:?^ 
If I never spared my own country \hear, hear\ if I never 
spared the American church, nor the government, nor my 
own party, nor my personal friends, did you expect I 
would treat you better than I did those of my own coun- 
try? \Applause?^ For I have felt from the first that I hold 
a higher allegiance than any I owe to man — to God, and 
to that truth which is God's ordinance in human affairs; 
and for the sake of that higher truth, I have loved my 
country, but I have loved truth more than my country. 
\_Applaiisc^^ I have heard the voice of my Master, saying, 
"If any man come unto me and hate not father, and 
mother, and brother, and sister, yea, and his own life also, 
he is not worthy of me." When therefore the cause of 
truth and justice is put in the scale against my own coun- 
try, I would disown country for the sake of truth; and 
when the cause of truth and justice is put in the scale 
against Great Britain, I would disown her rather than be- 
tray what I understood to be the truth. \^AppIa'jse?[ 

We are bound to establish liberty, regulated Christian liberty, 
as the law of the American Continent. This is our destiny, this 



468 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

is that towards which the education of the rising genera- 
tion has been more and more assiduously directed as the 
peculiar glory of America — to destroy slavery, and root it 
out of our land, and to establish in its place a discreet, in- 
telligent, constitutional, regulated, Christian liberty. We 
have accepted this destiny and this task: and if in accom- 
plishing this a part of our own people opposes us, we shall 
go right against our people to that destiny. \^ApplauseP\ 
If France undertakes to interfere, and to say "You shall 
not," much as we would regret to be at war with any na- 
tion on the globe, or with France in particular, who be- 
friended us in our early struggles and trials, still the cause 
of liberty is dearer to us than any foreign alliance, and we 
shall certainly say "Stand off, this is our work, and must 
not be hindered." If they bring war to us, they shall have 
war: for no foreign nation shall meddle with impunity 
with our domestic struggle. If Great Britain herself, tied 
to us by so many interests, endeared by so many historic 
associations, — to whom we can never pay the debt of love 
we owe her for those men who wrought out, in fire and 
blood, those very principles of civil liberty for which we 
are now contending, — yet, if even Britain shall openly or 
secretl}^ seek the establishment on our national territory of 
an independent slaveholding empire, we will denounce 
her word and deed; — and, terrible and cruel as will be the 
necessity, we will, if we must, oppose arms to arms. If 
Great Britain is for slavery, I am against Great Britain. 
\Checrsl\ If Great Britain is true to her instincts, and the 
interests of her illustrious history, and to her own docu- 
ments, laws, and institutions; if she is yet in favor of lib- 
erty, as she has always been here and everywhere in the 
world, I am for Great Britain; and shall be proud of my 
blood and boast that I have a share in your ancestral 
glory. My prayer shall be that Great Britain and America, 
joined in religion and in liberty, may march shoulder to 
shoulder in the great enterprise of bearing the blessings 
of religion and liberty around the globe. [C//<'^r.y.] 

The Slave States may be divided into two classes — the 
Farming States and the Plantation States. The farm- 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 469 

ing States are Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, 
Missouri, and parts of Tennessee and North Carolina. 
The lands there are devoted to a mixed husbandry, such 
as of corn (or maize), wheat, oats, grass, tobacco, and the 
grazing of herds of cattle. The farms generally are not 
large. In those States slave-labor is not profitable, and 
cannot be so. Slave-breeding is profitable, but not the 
labor of slaves. The plantation States are South Carolina, 
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, 
and Arkansas — eight. These States do not pursue a 
mixed husbandry. They raise principally cotton, sugar, 
rice, and tobacco, but chiefly the two great staples — cot- 
ton and sugar. They buy the principal part of their food, 
and almost all manufactured products. The pails they 
carry their water in are made in New England; their 
broom handles, their pins, glass, stone, iron, and tinware, 
and all their household furniture, are the manufacture of 
the North. There are some local exceptions, but what I 
state is substantially true of the slave States of the extreme 
South. Now, consider some facts. The labor of slaves in 
the farming States does not pay. Why? Because mixed 
farming requires much more skill than slaves have. Slave 
labor must always be applied to the production of rude 
and raw material. You cannot go much farther than that. 
Slave labor is rarely ever skilled labor; that would require 
too much brain, and its development is not consistent 
with the condition of the slave. Moreover, slaves are too 
costly. In the farming States they are better off, and 
therefore they are more expensive; for a man is expensive 
just in proportion as he rises in the scale of civilization, as 
I shall show you more at length in a moment. The object 
of slavery therefore in the more northerly slave States is 
not the production of tobacco, or corn, or maize, or wheat, 
or cattle, or dairy products; — the whole profit of slavery in 
the Northern slave States is in breeding slaves. [Hear, hear, 
a7id sensation^ Virginia has raised as much as {^24, 000, 000 
a year for slaves sold South. I will read you the testimony 
of a gentleman from the slave States. The editor of the 
Virginia Times, in 1836, made a calculation that 120,000 



470 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

I 

slaves went out of the State during the year, that 80,000 of 
them went with their owners who removed, leaving 40,000 
who were sold, at an average price of $600, amounting to 
$24,000,000. You cannot understand anything about slavery 
until you are admitted into the secrets of raising slaves as 
colts and calves are raised for market, and begin to see 
the inside of this, the most detestable and infernal system 
that the sun ever shone upon. 

But you may say that this is so only in Virginia. I ask 
your attention to the words of Heniy Clay. In 1829 he 
said before the Colonization Society, " It is believed that 
nowhere in the farming portions of the United States 
would slave-labor be generally emploj^ed if the proprietors 
were not tempted to raise slaves by the high prices of the 
Southern market." That is Mr. Clay's testimony, a Ken- 
tuckian, a slaveholder; and certainly he ought to know. 
Political reasons also help to keep up slavery in these 
States, and some personal reasons of which I shall not 
speak. These Northern slave States would emancipate 
their slaves if it were not that the cotton States give them 
a market. Gentlemen, you abhor the African slave trade. 
Let me tell you that the domestic slave trade of America 
is unspeakably worse. Bred amidst churches, refinements, 
and comparative civilization, they are capable of a thou- 
sand pangs more of suffering at ruthless separations than 
if they were yet but savages. I call your attention to a 
few propositions then, in reference to slavery as it exists 
in the extreme Southern States. 

And first, the system of slavery requires ignorance in the 
slave, and not alone intellectual but moral and social ig- 
norance. Anybody who is a slaveholder will find that 
there are reasons which will compel him to keep slaves in 
ignorance, if he is going to keep them at all. Not because 
intelligence is more difficult to govern; for with an intelli- 
gent people government is easier. The more you develop 
a man's intellect, the more you make him capable of self- 
government; and the more you keep him in ignorance, the 
more is he the subject of arbitrary government. Virtue 
and intelligence compel leniency of government; but ig- 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 471 

norance and vice compel tyranny in government. These 
things follow a natural law. The slave would not be less 
easily governed, if he were educated. If the slaveholder 
taught him to read and write, if he made him to know 
what he ought to know as one of God's dear children, the 
South would not be so much endangered by insurrection 
as she is now. There is nothing so terrible as explosive 
ignorance. Men without an idea, striking blindly and 
passionately, are the men to be feared. Even if the slaves 
were educated, they would be better slaves. What is the 
reason then that slaves must be kept in ignorance ? The 
real reason is one of expense. In order to make slave-labor 
profitable, you must reduce the cost of the slave; for the 
difference between the profit and the loss turns upon the 
halfpenny per pound. If the price of slaves goes up, and cot- 
ton goes down a shade in price, in ordinary times the plant- 
ers lose. The rule is therefore, to reduce the cost of the 
man; and the slave to be profitable must be simply a work- 
ing creature. What does a man cost, that is a slave ? Just a 
little meal and a little pork, a small measure of the coarsest 
cloth and leather, that is all he costs. Because that is all 
he needs — the lowest fare and the scantiest clothing. He 
is a being with two hands and two feet, and a belly. That 
is all there is of a profitable slave. But every new develop- 
ment within him which religion shall make — the sense of 
fatherhood, the wish for a home, the desire to rear his 
children well, the wish to honor and comfort his wife, every 
taste, every sentiment, every aspiration, will demand some 
external thing to satisfy it. His being augments. He de- 
mands more time. He strives to organize that little kingdom 
in which every human being has a right to be king, in which 
love is crowned, — the family ! It is this that makes an 
educated slave too expensive for profit. Profitable slave- 
holding requires only so much intelligence as will work 
well, and only so much religion as will make men patient 
under suffering and abuse. More than that — more con- 
science, more ambition, more divine ideas of human nature, 
of men's dignity, of household virtue, of Christian refine- 
ment, only make the slave too costly in his tastes. 



472 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Not only does the degradation of the slave pass over to 
his work, but it affects all labor, even when performed by 
free white men. Throughout the South there is the most 
marked public disesteem of honest homely industry. It is 
true that in the mountainous portions of the southwest, 
North Carolina, Northern Georgia, Eastern Tennessee, and 
Western Virginia, where slaves are few, and where a hardy 
people for the most part perform their own agricultural 
labors, there is less discredit attached to homely toil than 
in the rich alluvial districts where sugar and cotton cult- 
ure demand exclusive slave labor. But even in the most 
favored portions of the South, manual labor is but barely 
redeemed from the taint of being a slave's business, and 
nowhere is it honored as it is in the great and free North. 
Whereas, in the richer and more influential portions of the 
South, labor is so degraded that men are ashamed of it. 
It is a badge of dishonor. The poor and shiftless whites, 
unable to own slaves, unwilling to work themselves, live 
in a precarious and wretched manner, but a little removed 
from barbarism, relying upon the chase for much of their 
subsistence, and affording a melancholy spectacle of the 
condition into which the reflex influence of slavery throws 
the neighboring poor whites. Having turned their own 
industry over to slaves, and established the province and 
duties of a gentleman to consist in indolence and politics, 
it is not strange that they hold the people of the North in 
great contempt. The North is a vast hive of universal in- 
dustry. Idleness there is as disreputable as is labor in 
the South. The child's earliest lesson is faithful industry. 
The boy works, the man works. Everywhere through all 
the North men earn their own living by their own industry 
and ingenuity. They scorn to be dependent. They revolt 
at the dishonor of living upon the unrequited labor of 
others. Honest labor is that highway along which the 
whole body of the Northern people travel towards wealth 
and usefulness. From Northern looms the South is 
clothed. From their anvils come all Southern implements 
of labor; from their lathes all modern ware; from their 
lasts Southern shoes. The North is growing rich by its 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 473 

own industry. The small class of slaveholders in the 
South have precarious wealth, but at the expense of the 
vast body of poor whites, who live from hand to mouth all 
their days. No wonder then, that Southerners have been 
wont to deride the free workmen of the North. Governor 
Hammond only gave expression to the universal contempt 
of Southern slaveholders for 7vork and workmen, when he 
called the Northern laborer the " tnudsill of society," and 
stigmatized the artisan as the " greasy mechanic." The 
North and the South alike live by work; the North by 
their own work, the South by that of their slaves ! Which 
is the more honorable ? I have a right to demand of the 
workmen of Glasgow that they should refuse their sym- 
pathy to the South, and should give their hearty sympathy 
to those who are, like themselves, seeking to make work 
honorable, and to give to the working man his true place 
in society. Disguise it as they will, distract your attention 
from it as they may, it cannot be concealed, that the 
American question is the working mans question, all over 
the world ! The slave master's doctrine is that capital 
should own labor — that the employers should own the em- 
ployed. This is Southern doctrine and Southern practice. 
Northern doctrine and Northern practice is that the 
laborer should be free, intelligent, clothed with full cit- 
izen's rights, with a share of the political duties and 
honors. The North has from the beginning crowned 
labor with honor. Nowhere else on earth is it so honora- 
ble. The free States of the North and West, in America, 
are the paradise of laborers. One of the predisposing 
causes of the present conflict was the extraordinary con- 
trast of the riches of the North and the unthriftiness of 
the South, resulting from their respective doctrines of 
labor and the laborer ! 

It would seem as if Providence had demonstrated the 
wastefulness and mischiefs of every kind of despotism in 
church and in state, save one — despotism of work. For a 
grand and final contrast between the sin and guilt of 
labor-oppression, and the peace and glory of free-labor, he 
set apart the Western continent. That the trial might be 



474 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

above all suspicion, to the right he gave the meager soil, 
the austere climate, short summers, long and rigorous 
winters. To the wrong he gave fair skies, abundant soils, 
valleys of the tropics teeming with almost spontaneous 
abundance. The Christian doctrine of work has made 
New England a garden, while Virginia is a wilderness. 
The free North is abundantly rich, the South bankrupt ! 
Every element of prosperous society abounds in the 
North, and is lacking in the South. There is more real 
wealth in the simple little State of Massachusetts than in 
any ten Southern States. In the free States everything 
flourishes, in the slave States everything languishes. I 
point to the North and say, behold the testimony of Prov- 
idence for free labor ! I point to the South, and say, be- 
hold the legitimate results of slave-labor ! Oppression is 
as accursed in the field as it is upon the throne. It is as 
odious before God under the slave-driver's hat, as under 
the prince's crown, or the priest's miter. All the world 
over, slavery is detestable, and bears the curse of God 
everywhere ! 

The South has complained bitterly of this indisputable 
superiority of the North in the elements of national wealth 
and general prosperity. It has been charged to class legis- 
lation, to Yankee shrewdness at the expense of honesty, 
and to downright advantage taken by Northern commerce. 
The facts, are, however, that the legislation of the country 
has been controlled for fifty years by Southern influence. 
No class legislation was possible except in her own favor. 
The North, so far from cheating the South, has itself been 
obliged largely to make up the wastes and squanderings 
of the improvident slave-system. Southern bankruptcies 
have every ten years carried home to Northern creditors 
the penalty of complicity with slave-labor. Besides this, 
the South has contributed less and received more from the 
Federal Government, than the North. The peculiar nature 
of society under such industry and institutions made the 
functions of Government oppressive and expensive. Yet, 
with every partiality and favor of Government, and with 
the North for fifty years almost submissive to her will in 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 475 

public matters, the statesmen of the South beheld with 
dismay the mighty growth of the free States and the rela- 
tive weakness of the slave States. To maintain equipol- 
lence, new territory must be acquired, and new States 
brought into the Union, that the fatal weakness resulting 
from slavery in the older States might be compensated by 
the extent of the South, and by the number of votes in the 
Congress, — controlling legislation in their interest. 

Out of this radical conflict of free labor and slave -labor, 
have sprung naturally the elements of this war. In the 
race, slavery has crippled itself. It therefore seeks to 
escape from institutions and influences that expose its 
folly, that reveal its degradation and poverty, and would 
inevitably, in due time, revolutionize and destroy it. Not 
only is it true that the workipgmen of England have an 
interest in this conflict, as a political struggle; but, as a 
conflict between the two grand systems — Slave labor and 
Free labor — it addresses itself to every laboring man on the 
globe. If the North succeed and slavery be crushed, labor- 
ing men, all the world over, will be benefited. The Amer- 
ican conflict is but one form of that contest which is going 
on in all nations. Men that live by the sweat of their 
brow are aspiring to more education, to a larger sphere of 
influence, to some share of political power, to some joint 
fruition of that wealth which they help to create. They 
ought to know their fellows. They ought to recognize in 
every land who are striving for them and who against. It 
is monstrous that British workmen should help Southern 
slaveholders to degrade labor. Are there not enough 
already to crush the poor and helpless laborers of the 
world, without English workingmen, too, joining the rebel 
gang of oppressors ? Every word for the South is a blow 
against the slave ! Every stroke aimed at the slave re- 
bounds upon the European laborer ! Join the slave-owner 
in making labor compulsory and dishonorable, and the 
slave-owner will unite with European extortioners in grind- 
ing the poor operatives here ! The North is truly fighting 
the battle of the laborer everywhere. The North honors 
work. When the laborer is educated, all doors are open 



476 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to him, and it depends on his own powers and disposition 
whether he shall be a drudge or an honored citizen. It 
will be a burning shame for British workmen to side 
against their own friends ! 

Consider now, for a moment, what were our respective 
divisions when this war broke out which has fused all par- 
ties into one in the North and one in the South. We are 
not to expect parties formed methodically to suit any phi- 
losophical or ethical theory. Such arrangements never 
happen in a land so large, so diverse in population, so free 
in the operation of opinions, and swayed by so many mo- 
tives. Slavery had long exerted a grave influence upon 
the condition of the country before it was recognized in 
politics. Indeed, the first sign of the entrance of this vexed 
question into active politics was seen in the anxious en- 
deavors of all parties to exclude it. The early anti-slavery 
men found themselves shut out from all parties, from 
ecclesiastical bodies, from every organization of society. 
They gathered adherents outside of all moral and civil 
institutions. But nothing could long keep out a topic 
which was forced upon the North by the unwise and arro- 
gant legislation of the South. At length the subject took 
complete possession of politics, and divided the whole 
public into parties. But I shall consider the division of 
opinions, rather than of parties, which are seldom homo- 
geneous. 

There were three degrees of opinion. At the close of 
the war for independence the term Abolitionist was applied 
to such men as Franklin, John Jay, and others, who united 
in societies for promoting the abolition of slavery. These 
societies died out, and the name was almost forgotten, till 
revived about 1830, and applied, then and since, exclusively 
to Mr. Garrison and his school. These reformers regarded 
slavery as so established, and the institutions of the country 
as so controlled by its advocates, that all remedy was hope- 
less, and they urged an utter separation from the South, as the 
only way of freeing the North from the guilt and contam- 
ination of slavery. There was no political difference be- 
tween Mr. Garrison's disunion and Mr. Davis's secession. 



SPEECH IX GLASGOW. All 

But the moral difference was world wide. The disunionists 
of the Garrison and Wendell Phillips school were seeking 
to promote liberty and to weaken slavery. Mr. Davis and 
his followers are seeking to strengthen slavery and to 
restrict liberty. But the Abolitionists, though a herpic 
band, sought a right thing by a wrong method. Their 
party was never large, but their direct and indirect influ- 
ence was great. 

Another section was represented by the great body of 
moral and intelligent men in the North who held that 
slavery should be limited to its present territory; that, since 
it existed by State laivs and not by national laws, it should 
be restricted to those States in which it was found de facto; 
that Congress should leave it where it was, but defend the 
Territories from its incursions; that the Government should 
be put into the hands of men who loved liberty more than 
slavery; that our courts should be purged of judges ap- 
pointed to serve Southern interests. It was believed, and 
I was of this faith myself, that, were slavery rigorously 
confined to existing bounds, and the institutions of the 
nation arrayed on the side of liberty, gradually natural 
laws, with commercial changes and the exigencies of polit- 
ical economy, would work out a system of emancipation. 
These views were held by the North both in a latent and 
an active form, by men who were widely different in pol- 
itics, and who sought different and even conflicting methods 
of enforcing them. 

The third section was represented by that class of men 
which exists in every land without moral convictions in 
public affairs, who regard politics as a game, and who look 
only at interest as the end of parties. To such were added 
vast numbers of ignorant immigrants. With a partial and 
honorable exception in favor of the Germans, it must be 
said that the great body of immigrants flying from foreign hard- 
ships and oppression joined the pro-slavery party in America, 
and arranged themselves against the negro. This has 
been the peculiar and chief difficulty of the North in polit- 
ical efforts. We owe to Europe, but chiefly to Great 
Britain, those hindrances that so long paralyzed political 



478 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

effort, and divided the action of the North. It will be seen 
by this brief view, that the Northern movement proposed 
no violence nor any precipitate action. We relied on the 
inherent superiority of free labor to develop our embryo 
territories, and hoped that, with time and patience, moral 
inAuences, following the operation of great natural laws, 
would waste away slavery, without violence or revolution, 
and with benefit to both the bond and the free. The key- 
note of Northern policy was No more Slave States — 
No MORE legislation IN FAVOR OF SLAVERY. Let it die by 
its own inherent diseases ! 

Now let me speak of the South. What have been the 
divisions of the South ? There have been two tendencies 
there; a more moderate and a more extreme party. The 
former attempted to maintain the South on the basis of 
slavery; by the multiplication of new States; by the ac- 
quisition of territories, and so directing the Government 
as to fortify slavery till it should stretch across the conti- 
nent from ocean to ocean. That has been the object of the 
earlier and main party of the South. The second was the 
South Carolina party, who date from Mr. Calhoun's time. 
This party meant to break off from the Union as soon as 
they were strong enough. Just as long as anything was 
to be gained by staying, so long they meant to stay; but 
as soon as nothing m.ore was to be gained, they meant to 
go. They included the former plan, but more also. They 
designed, first, separate national existence as the ultimate 
aim of the Southern States; and secondly, the inclusion of 
the tropics of America in a gigantic cotton-growing slave 
empire. They meant, ere long, to seize Mexico and Cen- 
tral America; to include the vast central American trop- 
ical Oceanica, and spread slavery over all. They proudly 
said — Cotton is king ! and if we have cotton and the means 
of raising it, we can control the destiny of the globe ! 
They meant also to re-open the African slave-trade for the 
purpose of cheapening negroes, who are the most expen- 
sive item of labor. In South Carolina this scheme was 
unblushingly and openly advocated: and if I had lived in 
the South and been a slaveholder, I should have been of 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 479 

that party. What ! an advocate of the African slave- 
trade ? Yes, I should ! The day that I make up my mind 
to keep slaves, I shall have to keep them ignorant; and if 
I live in the cotton States, I am not likely to pay Virginia, 
under a home-tariff, a thousand dollars for a slave that I can 
import from Africa for three hundred dollars. The fact is, 
the law that makes the foreign slave-trade piracy is nothing 
but a high tariff in favor of the slave-breeding States; and 
the States that do not breed slaves, say, — That tariff must 
be taken off; if Africa can produce the material cheaper 
than Virginia, we must have the advantage of it. I de- 
clare too, that the inter-state slave-trade of America is in 
many most important respects more cruel than the rough- 
est part of the African slave-trade. To bring up men un- 
der the gospel; to bring up women with some of the tender 
susceptibilities of womanhood, and more than half their 
blood white blood, — to rear them in your household, and 
then, — if bankruptcy threatens, or exigencies press, to call 
out your valuable slaves from a Virginian plantation and 
sell them to the slave-master, to manacle them, — to drive 
in gangs men reared under the sound of the bell of the 
Christian Church, — who have acquired something of re- 
finement in their masters' families — to carry them down 
South in droves of fifties and hundreds, as is done on every 
great street and road of the northern line of Slave States, 
— is, I say, more infernal, more wicked, by as much as these 
northern-bred slaves are more tender, susceptible, and in- 
telligent, than the poor half-imbruted African. If God 
sends one bolt at the ship that brings slaves from Africa, 
double-shotted thunders are aimed at every gang-master 
that drives them from the Northern slave States to the 
Southern. \Applaiise^ It was perfectly natural that South 
Carolina should include in its project of aggrandizement 
the opening of the African slave-trade; and every freeman 
in Great Britain that goes for the South, really goes for the 
opening of that trade. \Cheers and hisses^ When you put 
a drunken engineer to drive a train, you may not mean to 
come to any harm, but when you are in that train you 
cannot help yourselves. It is just the same here. You do 



4 So PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

not mean the slave-trade, but they do; and all that they ask 
of you is — " Be blind." \^Laughter and applause?^ 

This Southern plan thus includes the opening of the 
slave-trade for the sake of cheapening negroes, and the 
secession threw the control of the whole South into the 
hands of these extremists. You may not be aware that 
when secession was proposed, after the election of Lincoln, 
every State by its popular vote went against secession, 
except South Carolina. Well, that might have seemed a 
fatal obstacle. Not at all. The leaders of this extreme 
party immediately began to work upon the legislatures 
either to call conventions or to act as conventions, and pass 
secession acts. The States were carried out of the Union 
into secession notwithstanding the vote of the people not 
many months before. How was it that Tennessee was 
carried out ? — how was Alabama carried out ? — how was 
even such a State as Georgia carried out against such a 
man as Mr. Stephens, the vice-president of the Confederacy 
— a man who, though on the wrong side, is the best man, I 
think, in the whole Southern States of America \applaiise\ 
and — if it were not for the accursed surrounding of slavery 
— is as true and far sighted a statesman as we have ever had 
in America. How did they carry out these States by their 
legislatures ? They said to the members of the legislatures 
throughout the South, " The North never stood in a fair 
stand-up fight. It was always anxious about its mills and 
stores and its money. They will rouse up at first, but 
whenever it comes to the last, and we threaten fire and 
bloodshed, they always knuckle under." Well, I am 
ashamed to say there was too much truth in this. Com- 
mercial interest on one side, and a desire for peace and 
love of the Union on the other, had always led the North 
to yield to Southern threats. But that was ended. A new 
spirit had arisen. The North notv for the first time thor- 
oughly believed that the South aimed to nationalize slavery. The 
North never had believed that it was worth while to agi- 
tate the controversy, until the outrageous conduct of the 
South in Kansas brought the North to its consciousness. 
Since then it has been true as steel. Well, the South said, 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 481 

" The North will not willingly see us go out of the Union 
— that is a mere ruse on our part: we will go out by ' seces- 
sion,' and say, We will come back if you give us new 
guaranties. Even if they will not do that, there will be no 
war; for the North will not fight us." With these argu- 
ments the legislatures were won, and the secession was 
accomplished in the greater number of the Slave States. 
The upper classes thought that secession was only a polit- 
ical trick, through which they were to go back into a re- 
constructed Union, with new guaranties inserted for the 
nationalization of slavery and for its extension all over the 
continent. 

But at this time there happened to be more or less of 
conference between friends in the North and friends in 
the South, and it seemed as if the consummation would 
be prevented. Virginia had refused persistently to pass 
the secession ordinance. The convention that was by 
the popular vote elected in Virginia was known to be 
immensely in favor of remaining in the Union. It was 
necessary that something should be done to prevent Vir- 
ginia standing out with the North; and it was done. The 
gang of slave-drivers in Richmond intimidated the mem- 
bers of the convention. When the history shall be written, 
the fact will appear, that numbers of convention members 
were made afraid for their lives. They were told almost 
in so many words, " You shall never leave Richmond 
alive, if you fail to vote secession." It was voted, but 
secretly, and it was not known in Virginia for weeks. I 
was myself a fellow-passenger with one man, who was 
making a circuitous journey throughout the North to get 
home alive to his farm in the Western part of V^irginia, be- 
cause he had been true, and refused to vote for secession, 
even secretly. It was to commit the South, to fire the 
wavering, and arouse the sectional blood, that orders were 
sent by telegraph from Washington by the Southern con- 
spirators who were lurking there — " Open your batteries 
on Fort Sumter." And they fired at that glorious old 
flag, which had carried the honor of the American name 
round the globe, in ordier that they might take Virginia 



482 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

out of the Union, and compel the North to submit either 
to a degrading compromise, or to the independence of the 
South. -That is the history of the matter. yApplallse^^ 

Now let me speak of the North. O, how I wish you 
could have seen the North ! I have stood on the summit 
of the noblest mountains in Switzerland: I have seen 
whatever that country had to show me of mountain peak, 
of more than royal mountains of clouds, of glaciers: I 
have seen the beauties of Northern Italy: I have seen the 
glories of the ocean: I have seen whatever Nature has to 
show of her sublimity on land and on sea: but the grand- 
eur of the uprising of the Northern people, when the 
thunder of the first cannon rolled through their valleys 
and over their hills, was something beyond all these; nor 
do I expect, till the judgment day fills me with wondering 
awe, to see such a sight again. There had been a secret 
agreement with a portion of the Democratic leaders in the 
North, that they were to side with the South, and paralyze 
Northern resistance. But with stern unanimity the public 
voice denounced complicity with the South as a treason 
worthy of death. The astounding outburst of patriotic 
feeling terrified even such men as the two Woods, and 
they made haste to join the rolling tide. No rainbow was 
ever so decked with color as was Broadway with flags. 
Bunting went up in the market. \^Laughter^ High and 
low, rich and poor, " Democratic " and " Republican," men 
that had been for the South, and men that had been for 
the North, found themselves in company. It is said that 
misery makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows, but 
patriotism makes even stranger transformations. I found 
men that were ready to mob me yesterday for my anti- 
slavery agitations, were ready to denounce me to-day be- 
cause I was not anti-slavery enough. Propelled by this 
universal feeling, the Government of the United States 
began — to do what ? To defend the laws and the consti- 
tution. If they fiad failed to do this, if when the Govern- 
ment and the country was threatened by this rebellion 
they had faltered, not Judas, not the meanest traitor that 
has ever been execrated through all time, would have sur- 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 483 

passed them in ignominy. [C/ieers.^ I have been asked, 
would it not have been better to negotiate ? What ! with 
cannon balls firing right into your midst ! [Hear, hear.~\ 
The other side was using powder and balls, and you pro- 
pose to us wad and paper ! The day for talking was gone 
by forever. They had talked too much already. It was 
then the day for action. [C/wers.] 

Men in England, Scotland, or Ireland, ask me, Why did 
you not consent to let them go, since the whole Southern 
economy is so opposed to Northern ? Only on the single 
matter of s/ave/y is there any antagonism. If that were 
to be an increasing and perpetual evil, many men would 
assent to separation who now do not. But we believe it 
to be a removable evil. The nature of our institutions is 
against it. The laws of nature are against it. The con- 
science of the nation, the public sentiment of Christendom, 
are against it. The real and general interest of the South 
itself is opposed to it. Free labor in place of slave labor 
would be the greatest boon that could be conferred upon 
the Southern States. Men that profit by slavery are but a 
handful; all the rest suffer from its deadly, wasting nat- 
ure. If then a limit can be placed to its growth, and it 
can be subjected to the unobstructed influences of natural, 
moral, and civil laws, it will quickly begin to decay and 
give place to a healthier system. Already the tendency had 
in many sections been established; and, as it was this fer- 
vent hope of a peaceful ending of slavery that disinclined 
thousands of conscientious men in the North to meddle 
with it, so now it is the same wish to see slavery ended 
that leads them to refuse their consent to a separation, 
which not only dismembers the nation, but gives a new 
lease of life to slavery, and opens for it a dark empire full 
of sorrow and tears and blood within, of quarrels and wars 
without, an empire of belligerent mischiefs to all. When 
I am asked, Why not let the South go ? I return for an 
answer a question. Be pleased to tell me what part of the 
British Islands you are willing to let go from under the 
crown when its inhabitants secede and set up for independ- 
ence ? If you say ten or fifteen States, with twelve millions 



484 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

of inhabitants, are not to be compared to the county of 
Kent, — I say, they are to be compared to Kent. For that 
county bears a greater proportion to the square miies of 
the British Islands than the rebellious States do to the 
whole territory of the Union. But the right or wrong of 
such rebellions are not questions in arithmetic. Numbers 
do not change civil obligations. Secession was an appeal 
from the ballot to the bullet. It was not a noble minority 
defying usurpation or despotism in the assertion of funda- 
mental rights. It was a despotism, which, when put to 
shame by the will of a free people, expressed through the 
ballot-box, rushed into rebellion as the means of perpetu- 
ating slavery. Northern sentiment, and great natural 
laws, were preparing the way for the emancipation of four 
million of slaves: thereupon eight million whites broke 
allegiance and withdrew from a free government in order 
to maintain this slave system; and that is praised, in 
Great Britain, as a heroic struggle for independence ! 
Whose independence, the white man's or the black man's ? 
Unreflecting men are deceived by the instances of colonics 
in the past, such as the American colonies, breaking off 
from the parent Government, and asserting their independ- 
ence. A remote colony, an outlying and separate territory, 
whose autonomy is already practically established, and 
whose connection with the home government is not inti- 
mate, territorial, adjacent, but only political, — is not to 
be compared with home territory, geographically touching 
the country along its whole line. This is not cutting off a 
foot, or a hand. It is cutting across the body right under 
the heart. The line of fracture proposed by the South is 
not a stone's throw from the national capital. France 
might consent to let Algiers go, but would she let a north 
and south line be run touching the city of Paris on the 
east, and separating all the territory east from her domin- 
ions? Great Britain might suffer the Canadas to secede 
from the crown; but would she suffer an east and west 
line to be run along the edge of London, and all the terri- 
tory south of it to pass into hostile hands? Yet this is 
the very case of America. Secession accomplished will 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 485 

leave Washington toppling on the edge of the Southern 
abyss, in whose lurid future loom the elements of quarrel, 
collision, and terrific war. In asserting the integrity of 
our territory under the national Government, we shut that 
door, through which threaten to come just such storms as 
have for hundreds of years past deluged Europe with 
blood. Better a single gigantic struggle now than a 
hundred years of intermittent wars, ending in treacherous 
truces, and breaking out again at every decade in fierce 
conflict. 

I shall now refer to the astonishing pretense made in 
England that this war has nothing to do with slavery ! 
Never has the South asserted this. The interest of slavery 
was the very ground alleged for rebellion, and the justifi- 
cation put in for it. Slavery having been adopted as the 
central principle of Southern political economy, — her poli- 
tics having for thirty years avowedly and indisputably 
moved around that center, — all her quarrels with the 
North having been about slavery, directly or indirectly, — 
the issues of the last Presidential election having been 
issues made upon this very question of slavery, — all her 
principal statesmen having made interferences with slavery 
wrongs at the hands of the North (wrongs in the past or 
feared in the future), the very reason of rebellion, — the 
whole interior history of America for seventy years hav- 
ing been wound up on this spool, — what amazing impu- 
dence do they manifest, who, calculating on the ignorance 
of the British public, dare to affirm, that slavery has nothing 
to do with this war ! Slavery has been the very alphabet 
of the war. Every letter of its history has been taken 
from the font of slavery. The whole black literature or 
the war has been drawn from slavery ! To be sure there 
is a division of opinion in America, whether the fire-eaters 
of the South, or the Abolitionists of the North, are most 
to blame for making slavery the occasion of the war; but 
not a sane man on our whole continent can be found deny- 
ing that slavery is the root of it ! You cannot point to a 
war either in ancient or modern times, that has turned so 
much upon fundamental principles as this one between 



486 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the North and the South. There is the South with her 
gigantic system of slavery, and there is the North with 
her freedom, her free soil, free labor, free speech, and her 
free press; and the question is, 7uhich of these two shall 
govern the American continents \^Applause?^ The North pre- 
ferred to settle this question by discussion, by moral in- 
fluence, by legal and constitutional means; but the South 
threw down the gauntlet, refused a convention, and fired 
on the old flag; and now her minions are whining and cry- 
ing in England because the North will make war ! If they 
did not like blows, why did they strike them ? I will ad- 
mit that the South are as gallant a people as ever lived; I 
will admit that when they shall come back to the Union, 
as they will — [applause, and cries of ^^JVever," and ivaving of 
handkerchiefs^ — they will come back — \a voice, '■^Never."'\ — ■ 
Perhaps you will not, but — \laughter'\ — they will. \^'' Never." 
A voice, ''''They are Anglo-Saxon and will never come back."^ 
Why, if I thought that this thing was to be fought out here, I 
would say it over and over again till daylight broke; but not 
your breath denying or mine affirming will alter the issue. 
The Grants, the Rosecranses, the Bankses, must do that. 
[Hisses.'\ But when the South shall come back into the 
Union \^^JVever"'\, we shall honor them more than ever 
we did, for their good management and courage. [Ap- 
plause.^ There are some things that men may pay too 
much to find out; but if the South, by paying the blood 
of thrice ten thousand of her sons, finds out that liberty is 
better than slavery, she will not have paid a drop too 
much. [Applause.'\ 

The triumph of the North in this conflict will be the 
triumph of free institutions, even if the Northern people 
and Government could be proved to have been delinquent, 
in every individual and in every public officer. Large as 
is our country, independent in opinions, and hitherto di- 
vided in sentiment about slavery, — never was any people 
so sincere, so religiously earnest, as is now the North. 
But, what if its people were insincere, its president a 
trickster, his emancipation proclamation a hollow pre- 
tense ? What if the North were as cruel to colored peo- 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 487 

pie as slavery is ? All that would not change the inevita- 
ble fact, that the triumph of the North carries with it her 
free institutions all over the continent ! // is awar of PHji- 
ciples and of Institutions. The victory will be a victory of 
Principles and of Institutions. This is avowed by the 
South as well as by us. If the North prevails, she carries 
over the continent her pride of honest work, her free pub- 
lic schools, her homestead law, which gives to every man 
who will occupy it a hundred and sixty acres. of land; her 
free press, her love and habit of free speech, her untiring 
industry, her thrift, frugality, and morality, and above all 
her democratic ideas of human rights, and her Old En- 
glish notions of a commonwealth, transmitted to her from 
Sydney, Hampden, Vane, Milton; and not least, her free 
churches with their vast train of charities and beneficences ! 
These results do not depend upon the will of individuals. 
They go with the society, the civilization, the ineradicable 
nature of those Northern democratic institutions which 
are in conflict with Southern despotic institutions. If then 
any one says, I cannot give my sympathy to the Northern 
cause, because the people of the North are just as bad as 
the people of the South, I first utterly deny the fact, but 
next, for the sake of argument, I for a moment yield it, 
and reply that the institutions of the North are not so bad 
as the institutions of the South, even if the people are. 
This is a war of institutions, not simply of races. It is 
not necessary to look into the motives of her individual 
citizens. Look into the spirit and structure of Northern 
society. Look at her history and see in the vast Western 
States what is the result of the ascendency of her ideas. 
Look into those great natural laws which have generated 
and controlled her civilization ! 

But I return to the shameless and impudent assertion 
that the North is not sincere in this conflict. True, the 
North has her own ways of managing her own affairs. 
She is guided by the genius of her own institutions, and 
not by the whims of unsympathizing critics three thou- 
sand miles off, ignorant of her ideas, history, institutions, 
emergencies, and difficulties. But there has never before. 



488 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

since time began, been a spectacle like that in America. A 
million men have been on foot in the army and navy, every 
man a volunteer, the best blood of the North, her workmen, 
her farmers and artisans, her educated sons, lawyers, doc- 
tors, ministers of the gospel, young men of wealth and 
refinement, side by side with the modest sons of toil, and 
every man a volunteer! They have come, not like the Goths 
and Huns from a wandering life or inclement skies, to seek 
fairer skies and richer soil; but from homes of luxury, 
from cultivated farms, from busy workshops, from literary 
labors, from the bar, the pulpit, and the exchange, throng- 
ing around the old national flag that had symbolized lib- 
erty to mankind, all moved by a profound love of country, 
and firmly, fiercely determined that the mother-land shall 
not be divided, especially not in order that slavery may 
scoop out for itself a den of refuge from Northern civili- 
zation, and an empire to domineer over all the American 
tropics ! It is this sublime patriotism which, on every 
side, I hear stigmatized as the mad rush of national am- 
bition ! Has then the love of country run so low in Great 
Britain, that the rising of a nation to defend its territory, 
its government, its flag, and all the institutions over which 
that has waved, is a theme for cold aversion in the pulpit, 
and sneers in the pew? Is generosity dead in England, 
that she will not admire in her children those very quali- 
ties which have made the children proud of the memories 
of their common English ancestors? 

But, it is asked, since the South is so utterly discordant 
with the North, why not let her go, and have peace ? Go ! 
But it is to STAY that they are fighting ! If their white 
population would but go and leave to us and to the negroes 
a peaceful territory, we might be willing; but it is a rebell- 
ious population asking leave to organize political inde- 
pendence within the United States for the sake of threat- 
ening the peace of the whole future ! Our trouble is, that 
if we give them leave to go, they will stay. \^Laitghteri\ 
No mountains divide the North from the South — they run 
the other way. No cross rivers divide them — they run the 
other way. No latitudes or climates divide the one from 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 489 

the other. Don't you know that God has affianced the tor- 
rid and the temperate zones in America one to the other, 
and that they are always running into each other's arms ? 
The Gulf-streams of population are constantly interchang- 
ing in such a continent as ours. There is no division line 
that you can make, except a merely arbitrary one. There 
is a line of twelve hundred miles, east and west, which you 
propose in your division to make the fiery line of a slave 
empire. Do you ask us to such a bequest of peace as that ? 
A Southern boundary of twelve hundred miles long, charged 
with the flames and thunder of war, ready to explode on 
any occasion? Well, may be — may be — you could lie down 
on a powder magazine, with a thousand tons of powder in 
it, and a fire raging within an inch of it, but / could not ! 
Will so much as one cause of quarrel be taken out of the 
way ? Will there be anything that will stop slaves run- 
ning across, and the South being irritated because we har- 
bor them ? Of course we should harbor them, as you do 
in Canada. No law could stop it then. \Chccrs?[ The 
only thing that ever gave to the Fugitive Slave Law a 
shadow, a vestige of power, was that for the sake of peace 
many in the North consented, somehow or other, to get 
rid of their consciences. I never did. \^Applaitsc^ I hated 
the law. I trod it underfoot; and I declared, to the face 
of the magistrates and the government, that I would break 
it in every way I could. And I did. \Cheersl\ Now say, 
if it were so, when there were motives of patriotism to 
maintain such an obnoxious law, what would it be when 
the sections were rent asunder? If separated, would the 
contrast of free labor and slave-labor be less exciting? 
Would our press be less bold in its proclamation of doc- 
trines of liberty? Would not parties in secret league with 
Southern parties torment the border States with new di- 
visions, and make impossible that peace by which we are 
to be bribed to cease this war? Cruel as the war is, yet to 
stop it until slavery has its death-wound, would be even 
more cruel ! When the surgeon has cut half the cancer 
out, is that man the friend of the patient, who, seeing the 
blood and hearing the groans, should persuade him to 



49° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

leave the operation half performed, and bind up the can- 
cered limb ? But, you ask, How long shall we carry vio- 
lence into the South? I will ask you a question in reply. 
If in the purlieus of vice in old Glasgow, there should be 
a ward of which a confederation of burglars and thieves 
had taken possession, how long would you invade it with 
your police ? \Laug/iter?^ Would Glasgow give up to them 
or would they have to give up to Glasgow? 

We may now understand what Southern rebellion means. 
There seems a need of information on this point in high 
places. Earl Russell, in replying to Mr. Sumner's argu- 
ments upon rebellion, reproached him with inconsistency 
in such a horror of rebellion, America being the child of 
two rebellions ! Were they rebellious against liberty to 
more despotism; or against oppression to more freedom? 
The English rebellion and the American rebellion were 
both toward greater freedom of all classes of men. This 
rebellion is for the sake of holding four million slaves with 
greater security, and less annoyance from free institutions! 
And now observe ! The South, expressly in order to hold 
fast her four million slaves, makes war against what the 
Confederate vice-president, Mr. Stephens, in dissuading 
secession, pronounced to be "the best, freest, justest, most 
lenient Government that the sun ever shone upon." He 
declared that the South had no grievances; and since 
secession, he has glorified the new Confederation, as estab- 
lished with " slavery as its corner-stone." On this is writ- 
ten in lurid letters of infernal light, " The only foundation 
of our liberty is to own the laborer and to oppress the 
slave." W^hen such a body of insurgents comes to ask you 
to recognize its independence, do you think it just and 
humane — is it according to the instinct — is it according to 
the conscience of Great Britain to say " That nation ought 
to have its independence " ? 

And now let me say one word more; for I am embold- 
ened by your courtesy. You now see what it means to 
give your aid and succor to the South. [C/ieers.~\ Why 
were you in favor of giving the Hungarians their liberty ? 
Because they said, The yoke of Austria is heavier than we 



SPEECH IN GLASGOW. 491 

can bear; and you sympathized with them because it was a 
step toward larger liberty. When Greece complained, why 
did the nations interfere ? It was to give her more liberty, 
not less. When Italy asked help, why did France — then 
guided by her better genius — give her armies to beat back 
the Austrians and give Italy her sway in the Northern part 
of that beautiful peninsula ? It was because Italy sighed 
for the sweets of liberty — that which is the right of every 
people on the globe. Why to-day does every man wish 
that the Czar may be baffled, that he may be sent back to 
the frozen fastnesses of the North, and that Poland may 
stand erect in her nationality? [C//^67x] Why? It is 
because Poland is under a despotism and is struggling for 
independence and liberty. \_Applause^ You know now 
what I think about sending clothes, arms, powder, ships, 
and all the muniments of war, or supplies of any kind, to 
the South. I do not stop to discuss whether it is legal or 
illegal. I do not discuss this as a question of technical law 
at all. I lift it up and put it on the ground of moral law. 
Between two parties, one of whom is laboring for the integ- 
rity and sanctity of labor, and the other is for robbery, the 
degradation of labor, and the integrity of slavery, — I say 
that the man that gives his aid to the Slave Power is allied 
to it, and is making his money by building up tyranny. 
\Hear^ and cheers?^ Every man that strikes a blow on the 
iron that is put into those ships for the South, is striking a 
blow and forging a manacle for the hand of the slave. 
\Applause and hisses^ Every free laborer in old Glasgow 
who is laboring to rear up iron ships for the South, is labor- 
ing to establish on sea and on land the doctrine that cap- 
ital has a right to own "labor." \Cheers and hisses.'] You 
are false to your own principles, to your own interests, to 
mankind, and to the great working classes. You have no 
right, for the sake of poor pitiful pelf, to go against the 
great toiling multitudes of Europe that are lifting up their 
hands for more education and more liberty. You have no 
right to betray that cause by allying yourselves with des- 
pots who, in holding slaves, establish the doctrine that 
might makes right. \_Applausc.'] It is not in anger that I 



492 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

speak, it is not in pettishness or in vehemence. It is the 
Day-of-Judgment view of the matter. O ! I would rather 
than all the crowns and thrones of earth to have the sweet, 
assuring smile of Jesus when he says, " Come, welcome; 
inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto 
me." And I would rather face the thunderbolt than stand 
before him when he says on that terrible day, " Inasmuch 
as ye did it not unto the least of these my little ones, ye 
did it not unto me." You strike God in the face when you 
work for slaveholders. Your money so got and quickly 
earned will be badly kept, and you will be poor before you 
can raise your children, and dying you will leave a memory 
that will rise against you at the day of judgment. By the 
solemnity of that judgment — by the sanctity of conscience 
— by the love you bear to humanity — by your old heredi- 
tary love of liberty; — in the name of God and of mankind, 
I charge you to come out from among them, to have noth- 
ing to do with the unclean and filthy lucre made by pander- 
ing to slavery. 

One word more. I protest, in the name of all that there 
is in kindred blood, against Great Britain putting herself 
in such a position that she cannot be in cordial and ever- 
during alliance with the free republic in America. \^Ap- 
plaiisc.\ I declare to you that it is a monstrous severance 
of your only natural alliance, for Great Britain to turn 
aside from free America and seek close relations with des- 
potism ! You owe youselves to us, and we owe ourselves 
to you. You ought to live at peace with France — you 
ought to study their reciprocal interest and they yours. 
But after all, while you should be in Christian peace with 
France, I tell you it is unnatural for England to be in 
closer alliance with France than America. [^Hear, and dis- 
approbation.'] Nevertheless, like it or dislike it, so it is ! On 
the other hand, it is truly unnatural for America, when she 
would go into a foreign alliance to seek her alliance with 
Russia. \^Hear, and applause.'] O, why don't you hiss now ? 
[Laughter.] I declare that America should study the pros- 
perity of Russia, as of every nation of the globe; but 
when she gives her heart and hand in alliance, she owes it 



SPEECH IX GLASGOW. 493 

to Great Britain. \^Applaiisc?^ So ! you want to hear that ! 
And when Great Britain turns to find one that she can lean 
on — can go to with all her heart — one of her own — we are 
her eldest-born, strongest — to us she must come. \_Ap- 
plaiise.'\ A war between England and America would be 
like murder in the family — unnatural — monstrous beyond 
words to depict. Now, then, if that be so, it is our duty to 
avoid all cause and occasion of offense. \^Hear, /icar.~\ But 
remember — remember— remember — icc are carrying out our 
dead. Our sons, our brothers' sons, our sisters' children — 
they are in this great war of liberty and of principle. We 
are taxing all our energies. You are at peace; and if in the 
flounderings of this gigantic conflict we accidentally tread 
on your feet, are we or you to have most patience ? When 
the widowed mother sits watching the shortening breath 
of her child, hovering between life and death, — it may be 
that the rent has not been paid, — it may be that her fuel 
has not yet been settled for; but what would you think of 
that landlord or of that provision dealer who would send 
a warrant of distress when the funeral was going out of 
the door, and arrest her when she was walking to the grave 
with her first-born son. Even a brute would say, "Wait — 
wait ! " Yet it was in the hour of our mortal anguish, that 
when, by an unauthorized act, one of the captains of our 
navy seized a British ship for which our Government in- 
stantly oft'ered all reparation, that a British army was 
hurried to Canada. I do not undertake to teach the law 
that governs the question; but this I do undertake to say, 
and I will carry every generous man in this audience with 
me, when I affirm that if between America, bent double 
with the anguish of this bloody war, and Great Britain, 
who sits at peace, there is to be forbearance on either side, 
it should be on your side. YAppIause.l 

Here then I rest my cause to-night, asking every one of 
you to unite with me in praying that God, the arbiter of 
the fates of nations, would so guide the issue that those who 
struggle for liberty shall be victorious; and that God, who 
sways the hearts of nations, may so sway the hearts of 
Great Britain and America that not to the remotest period 



494 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

of time shall there be dissension, but golden concord be- 
tween them, for their own sakes and for the good of the 
whole world. \Great cheering^ 

Several questions having been put and answered, the Rev. Dr. 
George Jefifery moved and Councilor Alexander seconded a reso- 
lution expressive of approbation of Mr. Beecher's able and un- 
compromising advocacy of the rights of the slave to freedom, and 
thanking him for the very admirable and eloquent address de- 
livered that evening, which was carried amid great and prolonged 
cheering. 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 

October 14, 1863. 



Long before the hour fixed for the meeting, all the entrances 
to the hall were besieged by large masses of people ; and the rush 
for places was so great that a few minutes after the opening of the 
doors every available seat was taken possession of. Crowds of 
people still continued to pour into the hall, and the passages be- 
came crammed. As the time arrived for the entrance of the 
chairman and Mr. Beecher, it became a serious question how 
they were to gain admission to the hall. After some time, how- 
ever, they managed to reach the platform, and were received with 
loud and prolonged cheers. Some of the gentlemen for whom 
seats had been reserved on the platform also gained admission — 
some by the passage, and others by climbing to the Moderator's 
gallery and walking along the ledge. 

The Chairman, Mr. Duncan M'Laren, said: "Ladies and Gen- 
tlemen : May I entreat as a great favor that the utmost quietness 
be preserved, because I have often observed that it is those in a 
large meeting who, with the best intentions in the world, cry 
' Peace,' that practically make all the noise. Since I have been 
made Chairman, every one, I have no doubt, will be quite dis- 
posed to give up a little of his personal liberty to my dictation to- 
night. You know what the meeting is about. The advertisement 
tells you honestly what the object is in calling you together, and 
therefore there is no person here present who has any right to 
take offense at anything that is said within the four quarters of the 
hall. The objects of the meeting are twofold — the first is to hear 
the Rev. Mr. Henry Ward Beecher. That means that we are to 
hear him express his own opinions; and whether or no these opin- 
ions may be in unison with your opinions or with mine, that is a 
matter of which the meeting has, I apprehend, no right to com- 
plain. We are greatly indebted to him, I think, for responding 
to the call. He has been toiling night and day, I may say, in 
Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and other towns ; and he has 
come here on a very short notice, and your anxiety to hear him 



496 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

has been such that you almost excluded him I feel 

that in this question, which has been so keenly contested in this 
country, there may be great difference of opinion on the part of 
the persons who are here present. I entreat that whatever differ- 
ence of opinion may exist, every one may be heard fairly and 
courteously, and if the resolution which is proposed to the meet- 
ing be disapproved of, and any gentleman comes forward to the 
platform to move an amendment, I will do as much to give him a 
hearing for his speech, if within the scope of the resolution, as I 
would do to any other gentleman. [Loud c/n'c-rs.] I am most 
anxious that everything should be done in such a straightforward 
manner as will commend itself to all lovers of fair play. [Ckccrs.] 
I may just state, in addition, this one fact, that from other cir- 
cumstances we have been honored in this city with the presence 
of many distinguished foreigners, and among these three or four 
gentlemen who were to have gone by the six o'clock train to- 
night in order to get to Paris to-morrow morning. They kindly 
agreed to testify their detestation of slavery by attending at this 
meeting, in order to say a few words in unison with what I have 
no doubt will be said by Mr. Beecher. These are M. Garnier 
Pages, M. Desmarest, and M. Henri Martyn, the distinguished 
historian of France." [App/aitse.] Mr. M'Laren concluded by 
introducing Mr. Beecher to the meeting. 

Mr. Beecher, on coming forward, was received with loud and 
prolonged cheers and some hissing. When silence had been re- 
stored, he spoke : — 

I should regret to have my associations of this, the most 
picturesque city of the world, disturbed as they would be 
if I thought that you needed so much preparatory plead- 
ing to persuade you to hear me. \^I^oud applause and laugh- 
ter^ I have lived in a very stormy time in my own land, 
where men who did not believe in my sentiments had 
pecuniary and political interests in disturbing meetings, 
but neither in East, nor West, nor in all the Middle States, 
have I thought it necessary to ask an audience to hear me 
— not even in America, the country, as we have lately been 
informed, of mobs ! \^Loud cheers and laughter l\ I am not 
to-night a partisan seeking for proselytes. I have no other 
interests to serve but those which are common to all good 
men — the interests of truth, of justice, of liberty, and of 
good morals. If I differ with you in the way in which they 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 497 

are to be promoted, what then ? Cannot you hear opin- 
ions that you do not believe ? I am so firm in my convic- 
tions that I can bear to hear their opposites. \Chcers^^ It 
is not then so much to persuade you to my views, though 
I should be glad to do that, as it is to give a full and frank 
expression of them, supposing that there are many here 
that would be interested in a statement of affairs, as they 
are now proceeding on the continent of America, — if for 
no other reason, at least for the philosophic interest there 
must be in these passing phenomena. It may be to you 
but a simple question of national psychology; it may be to 
some of you a matter of sympathy; but whether it be phil- 
osophic interest or whether it be humanitarian and moral 
interest, it shall be my business to speak, for the most 
part, of what I know, and so to speak that you shall be in 
no doubt whatever of my convictions. \_Loud cheers and 
laughter^ 

America has been going through an extraordinary revo- 
lution, unconsciously and interiorly, which began when 
her present national form was assumed, which is now de- 
veloping itself, but which existed and was in progress just 
as much before as now that it is seen. The earlier 
problem was how to establish an absolute iiidependeuce in 
States from all external control. Next (and this is the 
peculiar interest of the period which formed our Constitu- 
tion), how, out of independent States to form a Nation, 
yet without destroying local sovereignty. The period o^ 
germination and growth of the Union of the separate col- 
onies is threefold. The first colonies that planted the 
American shores were separate, and jealous of their sep- 
araterjess. Sent from the mother country with a strong- 
hatred of oppression, they went with an intense individ- 
ualism, and sought to set up, each party, its little colony, 
where they would be free to follow their convictions and 
the dictates of conscience. [Loi/d applause.'\ And nothing 
is more characteristic of the earlier politics of the colonists 
than their jealous isolation, for fear that even contact 
would contaminate. Two or three efforts were made 

within the first twenty or twenty-five years of their exist- 
32 



498 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ence to bring them together in Union. Delegates met and 
parted, met again and parted. Indian wars drove them 
together. It became by external dangers necessary that 
there should be a Union of those early colonies, but there 
was a fear that in going into Union they would lose some- 
thing of the sovereignty that belonged to them as colo- 
nial States. The first real Union that took place was 
that of 1643, between -the colonists of what is now New 
England. It is a little remarkable, I may say in passing, 
that the fugitive slave clause of our Constitution is 
founded almost in so many words on the first Articles of 
Federation that were made in 1643 between these little 
New England colonies. This earliest Union was the type 
and model of later ones. With various alternations of 
fortune the country grew, but maintained a kind of irregu- 
lar Union as exigencies pressed upon it. It was not until 
1777, a year and a half after the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and while the colonies were at full war with the 
mother country, that what is called the Articles of Fed- 
eration were adopted; and this was the second period of 
Union, when the Southern States, the Middle States, and 
the States of New England came together in Federation, 
which was declared, in the preamble, to be perpetual. 
\Cheei's?^ But about ten years after these articles were 
framed, they were found to be utterly inadequate for the 
exigencies of the times; and in 1787 the present Constitu- 
tion of the United States was adopted by convention, and, 
at different dates thereafter, ratified by the thirteen States 
that first constituted the present Union. 

Now, during all this period of the first Union of 1643, 
the second Union of 1777, and the third or final Union — 
the present one — of 1787, there is one thing to be re- 
marked, and that is, the jealousy of State independence. 
The States were feeling their way towards nationality; 
and the rule and measure of the wisdom of every step was, 
how to maintain individuality with nationality. That was 
their problem. It never had been found out for them. 
They had some analogies, but these were only analogies. 
In that wilderness, for the first time, the problem was 



SPEECH IX EDINBURGH. 499 

about to be solved — How can there be absolute independ- 
ence in local government with perfect nationality ? Sla- 
very was only incidental during all this long period; but in 
reading from contemporaneous documents and debates 
that took place in conventions both for Confederation and 
for final Union, it is remarkable that the difficulties which 
arose were difficulties of representation, difficulties of tax- 
ation, difficulties of tariff and revenue; and, so far as we 
can find, neither North nor South anticipated in the 
future any of those dangers which have overspread the 
continent from the black cloud of slavery. The dangers 
they most feared, they have suffered least from: the 
dangers they have suffered most from, they did not at all 
anticipate, or but little. But the Union was formed. The 
Constitution, defining the national power conferred by the 
States on the Federal Government, was adopted. Thence- 
forward, for fifty years and more, the country developed 
itself in wealth and political power, until, from a con- 
dition of feeble States exhausted by war, it rose to the 
dignity of a first class nation. 

We now turn our attention to the gradual and uncon- 
scious development within this American nation of two 
systems of policy, antagonistic and irreconcilable. Let us 
look at the South first. She was undergoing unconscious 
transmutation. She did not know it. She did not know 
what ailed her. She felt ill — \Jai(ghtc7-\ — put her hand on 
her heart sometimes; on her head sometimes; but had no 
doctor to tell her what it was, until too late; and when 
told she would not believe. \_Laug/ifer and cheers^ For it 
is a fact, that when the colonies combined in their final 
Union, slavery was waning not only in the Middle and 
Northern States but also in the South itself. When there- 
fore they went into this Union, slavery was perishing, 
partly by climate in the North, and still more by the con- 
victions of the people, and by the unproductive character 
of farm-slavery. Slavery is profitable only by breeding 
and on plantations. In the North it never was very 
profitable, though somewhat convenient as a household 
matter; for if you can get a good chambermaid and a 



500 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

good cook, it is worth while to keep them. \^Laitghter?^ 
There was for the most part in New England only the 
shadow of slavery — household slavery. The first period of 
the South was the wane and weakness of slavery. Never- 
theless it existed. The second period is the increase of 
slavery, and its apologetic defense; for, with the invention 
of the cotton gin, an extraordinary demand for cotton 
sprang up. Slave labor began to be more and more in 
demand, and the price of slaves rose; but still there was a 
number of years within my remembrance — and I am not a 
patriarch — in which men said, " Slavery is among us; we 
don't know how to get rid of it; we accept it as an evil; 
we wish we had a better system, but it is a misfortune and 
not a fault." I remember the apologetic period. Then 
came the next period, one of revolution of opinion as to 
the inferior races of the South, a total and entire change 
in the doctrines of the South on the question of human 
rights and human nature. It dates from Mr. Calhoun. 
From the hour that Mr. Calhoun began to teach, there 
commenced a silent process of moral deterioration. I call 
it a retrogression in morals — an apostasy. Men no longer 
apologized for slavery: they learned to defend it; to teach 
that it was the normal condition of an inferior race; that 
the seeds and history of it were in the Word of God; that 
the only condition in which a republic can be prosperous, 
is, where an aristocracy owns the labor of the community. 
That was the doctrine of the South, and with that doctrine 
there began to be ambitious designs, not only for the 
maintenance but the propagation of slavery. This era 
of propagation and aggression constitutes the fourth and 
last period of the revolution of the South. They had 
passed through a whole cycle of changes. These changes 
followed certain great laws. No sooner was the new 
philosophy set on foot, than the South recognized its 
legitimacy and accepted it with all its inferences and 
inevitable tendencies. They gave up wavering and mis- 
givings, adopted the institution — praised it, loved it, de- 
fended it, sought to maintain it, burned to spread it. 
During the last fifteen years, I believe you cannot find a 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 501 

voice, printed or uttered, in the cotton States of the South, 
which deplored slavery. All believed in and praised it, 
and found authority for it in God's Word. Politicians 
admired it, merchants appreciated it, the whole South 
sang paeans to the new found truth, that man was born to 
be owned by man. \^Loud cheers.^ This change of doc- 
trine made it certain that the South would be annoyed 
and irritated by a Constitution which, with all its faults, 
still carried the God-given principle of human rights, 
which were not to be taken by man except in punishment 
for crime. That Constitution, and the policy which went 
with it at first, began to gnaw at, and irritate, and fret the 
South, after they had adopted slavery as a doctrine. How 
could they live in peace under a Constitution that all the 
time declared the manhood of men and the dignity of 
freedom ? It became necessary that they should do one 
of two things: either give up slavery, or appropriate the 
government to themselves, and in some way or other 
drain out of the Constitution this venom of liberty, and 
infuse a policy more in harmony with Southern ideas. 
They took the latter course. They contrived to possess 
themselves of the government; and for the last fifty years 
the policy of the country has been Southern. Was a 
tariff wanted ? It was made a Southern tariff. Was a 
tariff oppressive ? The Southerners overthrew it. Was a 
tariff wanted again ? The Southern policy declared it to 
be necessary, and it was passed. Was more territory 
wanted ? The South must have its way. Was any man 
to obtain a place ? If the South opposed it, he had no 
chance whatever. For fifty years most of the men who 
became judges, who sat in the Presidential chair and in 
the Courts, had to base their opinions on slavery or on 
Southern views. All the filibustering, all the intimidations 
of foreign Powers, all the so-called snubbing of European 
Powers, happened during the period in which the policy 
of the country was controlled by the South. May I be 
permitted to look on it as a mark of victorious Christianity, 
that England now loves her worst enemy, and is sitting 
with arms of sympathy round her neck ? \_Loud cheers.'\ 



502 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

There was at the same time a revolution going on in 
the North unconsciously. The first period of revolution 
begun in the North was what might be called the founda- 
tion-laying. Material wealth began to be amassed, manu- 
facturing and farm-labor flourished, schools were multi- 
plied, colleges were rising. It was a period in which the 
North was developing and consolidating its power. Then, 
for many years — and it is a count of about thirty years 
ago — the North began to be assailed by bold prophets of 
the truth, and a crusade was commenced against slavery. 
[C/ieers.^ I was then a boy, but old enough to be a spec- 
tator and a sj^mpathizer. Those men, for the most part, 
have gone down into their graves — their names not yet 
honored as they will be; for the day is coming, when 
round their names, and the names of all who have been 
faithful to the sacred cause of liberty, there will be hung 
garlands, and they shall be clothed with honor; but around 
the brows of those who have betrayed their countr}'^ to 
despotism shall shine lurid light in flame that shall con- 
sume. \^C/ieers.] The man who was an abolitionist when 
I was twenty-one years of age might bid farewell to any 
hopes of political advancement; and the merchant who 
held these opinions was soon robbed of customers. As 
far as I remember, there was nothing in the world that so 
ruined a man — not crime itself was so fatal to a man's 
standing in the country — as to be known to hold abolition 
sentiments. The churches sought to keep the question of 
slavery out; so did the schools and colleges; so did synods 
and conventions; but still the cause of abolition pro- 
gressed; and still, as is always the case with everything 
that is right, though the men who held those sentiments 
were scoffed at, though such men as Garrison were dragged 
through the streets with halters round their necks, yet, the 
more it was spoken of and canvassed, the more the cause 
prospered, because it was true. iC/ieers.^ The insanity at 
last abated; for the command came from on high, sajnng 
to the evil spirit concerning the North: "I command thee 
to come out of her." Then the nation wallowed on the 
ground, and foamed at the mouth; but the unclean spirit 



SPEECH IN EDIXBURGH. 503 

passed out, and she became clean. The more some people 
wanted to keep down this subject and keep out the air, the 
more God forced the subject on their minds. If you let a 
steam engine, when it is full of steam, hiss at the rivets, 
with the scape valve open, it cannot explode; but if the 
steam is shut up, and the valve closed, it will be still for a 
moment, and then, like thunder, it will go off ! So it was 
in regard to this subject. Those who discussed it, became 
convinced of its truth; but those who would not permit it 
to be spoken of, and shut it up, brought on explosion. 
\^Laiighter and c/ieers.^ 

About this time the South began to take such steps as 
more and more brought the North into a rightful frame of 
mind. The first conflict that arose between the South and 
the North was in regard to the admission of the new State 
of Missouri in 1818. \^Hear.'\ The North contended that 
there should be no more slave States — the doctrine that is 
now reviving as the doctrine of the Republican Party. It 
was the original doctrine and conviction that slavery might 
be tolerated where it was, but that no more States should be 
admitted. When Missouri knocked at the door, there were 
those who opposed its admission as a slave State, but by 
Southern management and intimidation Henry Clay per- 
suaded the North to a compromise. Now when there is 
no difference in principle, but only conflicting interests, a 
compromise is honorable and right, but when antagonistic 
principles are in question, I believe compromises to be 
bargains with the devil, — who is never cheated. \^Loud 
laughter and cheers^ The North gave up her principles and 
admitted the Missouri State with slavery as an exception, 
and by the compromise obtained a line of latitude that 
should limit slavery. Above the latitude of 36° 30'' all 
States, except Missouri, were to be free; south of that line 
there might be slave States. By this concession, however, 
they gave up the whole principle, as such compromises 
always must. 

Then came the next conflict. The policy of the North 
and the policy of the South again jarred against each 
other. The North was striving, according to the spirit 



504 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

of the Constitution and the expressed convictions of the 
fathers of the country, the founders of the Union, to carry 
out the doctrines of liberty. The South became ambi- 
tious, and having possession of the Government, aimed to 
enforce their ideas of slavery upon the whole continent. 
Hence, admission of Texas and the war with Mexico for 
the sake of territory. Next were seized the regions of 
New Mexico and California. These were added to the 
Union not by the North, but by the South. Then came 
the compromise measures of 1850, and the Fugitive Slave 
Bill, which the North accepted finally, as children take med- 
icine, when the silver spoon is forced into their teeth, and 
they are almost choked to make them take it. \^Laughter?^ 
Then came the only abolition that I ever heard the South 
were in favor of — the abolition of the Missouri Compro- 
mise. What that was, I have just been telling you. But 
now the South suddenly found out that the compromise 
was unconstitutional and void. They claimed to abolish 
the compromise and have slave States north of the line of 
36° 30^ The North, although incensed and indignant, 
yet from love for the Union of the States, gave up their 
own convictions and their proper line of duty. After the 
abolition of the Missouri Compromise it was declared by 
the South that the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty should 
be established — a doctrine to the effect that when the ad- 
mission of a State was determined on, it should come in a 
slave State or a free State, according to the vote of its 
population. The South carried this measure, and the mo- 
ment they carried it they attempted to get Kansas intro- 
duced as a slave State; but the Northern men were too 
quick for them \Jaiightcr and applausc\ for they sent such a 
superabundant population into Kansas, that they soon 
lifted the white banner without a black star upon it. 
\Chee)■s^^ The instant this was done, the South turned 
round and said, " Popular sovereignty is not constitu- 
tional or expedient. \^LaiigJitcr and applause^ The States 
applying for admission shall not have the liberty of saying 
whether they will come in free or slave." This was the 
work of Mr. Slidell \Jiisses\ now Minister for the Southern 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 505 

States in Paris. \^Hisscs and slight applause.^ I wish he were 
in this hall to hear you hissing. [C//dWx] 

By this time the North had become thoroughly roused 
and indignant. They had at length opened their eyes, and 
reluctantly began to see that the South meant nothing short 
of forcing slavery over the whole continent. The North 
thereupon grew firmer, and in 1856 nominated Fremont, 
for the purpose of showing that they were no longer to 
be browbeaten by slavery. He failed of election; but 
failed in the noblest way, by the cheats of his opponents. 
The State that gave us Buchanan to be a burden for four 
3'^ears, was the State in which the cheating took place. 
Then came the last act of this revolution of feeling in the 
North — the election of Mr. Lincoln. \^Loud and protracted 
ihecring.'] The principle that was laid down as a distinct 
feature of the platform on which Mr. Lincoln was elected, 
was, that there should be no more slave Territories — in 
other words, the breathing hole was stopped up, and 
slavery had no air; it was only a question of time how 
long it would last before it would be suffocated. \^Laug/i- 
ter and cheers^ The North respected the doctrine of State 
rights, when Georgia said that slavery was municipal and 
local, and that the government of the United States had 
no right to touch slavery in Georgia. The North accepted 
the doctrine. It was true, that they could not touch slavery 
in the States; yet the North had a right, in connection with 
the Middle States, to say, " Although in certain States 
slavery exists beyond our political reach, yet the territory 
that is free and is 7iot beyond Federal jurisdiction shall not 
be touched by the foot of a slave. \Loud cheers?^ That was 
the spark which exploded, and this is the war that followed; 
for the South knew perfectly well, — and there is no place 
where logic is better understood than in the South, — that 
if limits were set to the Slave States, if the territory could 
be no further extended, the prosperity of the slaveholders 
was at an end. They determined that that doctrine should 
be broken up, and they went into the Secession war for 
that very purpose. 

All these were conflicts between the North and the 



5o6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

South, about the growth of slavery, and in all but one of 
them the South had its own way. \^Hear?^ The States had 
been charging each other with guilt, and with infidelity to 
obligations, but it was now collision. It was the attraction 
of great underlying influences that moved both South and 
North. The principle which had been operating in the 
North for many years was the principle of free labor, while 
the principle which had impregnated all Southern minds 
was the principle of slave labor. The result is this: the 
South is exhausting the whole life of the States in defense 
of slavery. This is historical now. The great cause of 
the conflict — the center of necessity, round which the 
cannons roar and the bayonets gleam, — is the preservation 
of slavery. Beyond slavery, there is no difference between 
North and South. Their interests are identical, with the 
exception of work. The North is for free work — the South 
is for slave work; and the whole war in the South, though 
it is for independence, is, nevertheless, expressly in order 
to have slavery more firmly established by that independ- 
ence. \^Hcar, hear; c/icers, and some hissesi\ On the other 
hand, the whole policy of the North, now at last regen- 
erated, and made consistent with their documents, their 
history, and real belief — the whole policy of the North, as 
well as the whole work of the North, rejoicing at length to 
be set free from antagonism, bribes, and intimidations, — is 
for liberty; liberty for every man in the world. \Cheers?^ 
I wish you to consider for a moment what is the result 
of this state of things in the North. There never was so 
united a purpose as there is to-day to crush the rebellion. 
We have had nearly three years of turmoil and disturb- 
ance, which not only has not taken away that determina- 
tion, but has increased it. In the beginning of this conflict 
we were peculiarly English. What do I mean by that ? 
Well, if I have observed aright, England goes into wars to 
make blunders at first, always — \Jiisscs and c/icers] — but you 
must be aware, that in the end it is not England that has 
blundered. I have noticed, in the course of my study of 
the Penisular war under Wellington, that the first whole 
year was a series of blunders and fraudulent squandering 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 507 

\cheers\\ but, if I recollect aright, at last the same Well- 
ington drove his foes out of the Peninsula. \Cheers^ And 
so it is with us. We have so much English blood in our 
veins, that when we began this war we blundered and 
blundered; but we are doing better and better every step. 
\^Loud c/iccriiig.'\ There has been time enough for mere 
enthusiasm to have cooled in the North. That has passed 
away. Enthusiasm is like the vapor, just enough con- 
densed to let the sun striking upon it fill it with gorgeous 
colors; but when still further it condenses, and falls in 
drops for the thirsty man to drink, or carries the river to 
the cataract, then it has become useful and substantial. 
Enthusiasm, at first, is that airy cloud; but when it has be- 
come a principle in the hearts of the people, then it becomes 
substantial; and such is the case in the North. Enthu- 
siasm has changed its form, and is now become substantial 
moral principle. [^C/ieers.'\ The loss of our sons in battle 
has been grievous; but we accept it as God's will, and we 
are determined that every martyred son shall have a repre- 
sentative in one hundred liberated slaves. \^Loud c/ieers.~\ 
Never was such a unity of Christian men in the North as 
there is to-day. I have in my possession some two hun- 
dred resolutions, passed by different Christian churches 
and denominations in America, saving the Roman Catho- 
lics. In every form of language they express themselves 
alike resolute for the maintenance of the government and 
the crushing of the rebellion. I may say that there is no 
seam in the garment that binds us together. We are one. 
\_C/icers.'\ The Peace-Democrats have tried three times to 
put a stop to the war, and every time they tried it, it be- 
came evident that the only platform in America, on which 
this subject can be discussed, is this — that the war must 
be carried on till the Union is re-established. \_Loud chee?-s.^ 
The Americans are a practical people. They know their 
own business. \Hcar, hear.'] No one so well able as they 
are, to judge what they want; and when they have delib- 
erately arrived at a firm resolve, they surely are to be re- 
garded, at least with respect, if not with sympathy. 
\_C/ieers.~\ This much we expect, that when a people twenty 



5o8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

millions strong, intelligent, moral, and, as you know, thrifty 
— when people of this sort, after three years of delibera- 
tion, are fixed on one purpose, they at least demand cour- 
tesy, if not respect. \Loud cJieers^ 

We are told that we are breaking our constitutional ob- 
ligations by the measures we have taken; but we were 
forced to adopt those measures, and the reasons are abun- 
dant and plain. How ? When a fire first breaks out, the 
engineer goes down and plays upon the fire, thinking that 
he will be able to save the furniture and the neighboring 
houses; but, as the devouring element increases, and 
threatens destruction to all around, the engineer says, 
" Bring me powder," and he blows up the neighboring 
house, then the next, and then the next, until a sufficient 
gap is made to prevent the spread of the conflagration. 
\Cheers^ When he began, he did not think that he would 
require to sacrifice so much: and so it is with us. When 
this rebellion commenced, we thought to put it down, and 
to maintain, at the same time, the rights of the States; but, 
when the war assumed such proportions as seemed to 
threaten the destruction of the nation and its constitutional 
Government, it became a question whether the President 
should put in practice the powers he possessed of saving 
the Union at all hazards. \Cheers^^ Long he paused, I know; 
for I assisted in bombarding him. \^Laughtcr and chcers.\ 
For months, and months, and months, I both pleaded 
and inveighed against the dilatory policy at Washington, 
and at last the President issued a proclamation, declaring 
that the rebellion had assumed such proportions, that, for 
the sake of saving the country, he intended to exercise the 
power he possessed, and to confiscate the total " property " 
of the South, the whole of the slaves being included, 
for the sake of saving the Union and the Constitution. 
\Checrs^ 

But some men speak to me, and say, " O, I am tired of 
waiting; when is this little quarrel of yours on the other side 
to be settled ? " {^Laughter ^ A little quarrel — \laughtcr\ 
— with 1,200 miles of a base line — a little quarrel that com- 
menced only seventy-five years ago ! You ask how ? The 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 509 

smouldering fire that by some means or other has caught 
a rafter between the ceilings is not known of at first; but 
after two or three days it bursts out, and the whole build- 
ing is consumed. The fire did not begin when it became 
visible to the eyes; it began some time before. In the 
same way this war did not begin three years ago. It be- 
gan when this Constitution was adopted — a Constitution 
for liberty with a policy for slavery — \j:heers\ — and it is as 
impossible to tell when it will come to a termination as it is 
to foretell the conclusion of any great matter affecting the 
welfare of thirty millions of people, contingent partly on 
great laws and partly on interfering politicians. It might 
close next year; it might close in three years; it might 
close in five. We have lost many sons, we have spilled 
much blood. This is the operation by which the cancer is 
to be severed from our system; the operation is now far 
advanced, and woe be to the man who interferes with it 
before the last bit of virus is removed. \CJieers^ But, let 
me say, even a servant who will bear a blow cannot bear 
to be beaten and preached at both together. If you insist 
on groaning over the tediousness of the war, you must not 
aid to prolong it. Either do not ask us when it will end, 
or else do not send ships and guns to the rebels in the 
South. If you want to sympathize with us, do so; and if 
you must assist the rebels, do so; but do not attempt both 
things at once. \^Hear, hear; and applause^ 

I thank Earl Russell for his speech at Blairgowrie. It is 
a speech that has brought comfort and gladness to the 
hearts of our American friends. \Hear^ hcari\ A friend 
of mine in New York has written to me, stating that the 
whole feeling there has been changed since the intelligence 
of Earl Russell's speech. We do not want to quarrel; we 
do not want animosity between Great Britain and America. 
No man has spoken of Great Britain words of praise and 
blame with more honest heart than I have. \Cheers and 
some hisses^ That man is not your friend who dares not 
speak of your faults to your face. The man that is your 
friend tells you when he thinks you are wrong; and whether 
I am right or wrong, I assert, that in giving moral sym- 



5IO PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

pathy largely to the South, and above all, in allowing the 
infamous traffic of your ports with the rebels, thus strength- 
ening the hands of the slaveholders, — and that, without 
public rebuke, — you have done wrong. I have said this, 
because, dear as your country is to us, precious as were the 
legacies given to us of learning and religion, and proud as 
we have been for years past to think of our ancestry and 
common relationship to you — yet so much dearer to us 
than kindred is the cause of God, that, if Great Britain 
sets herself against us, we shall not hesitate one moment 
on her account, but shall fulfill our mission ! [C//^^/-^.] 

Earl Russell was, however, pleased to say that this was 
a conflict for territory on the one part, and for independ- 
ence on the other. You know just as well as I, that the 
North has been adverse to the acquisition of territory. It 
was the South that brought in Texas, that brought in the 
whole of the Louisiana tract by purchase; it was the South 
that went to war with Mexico, and added New Mexico, 
and the whole of California; and it was the South that 
sent Walker, the filibusterer, to Cuba. The South would 
have territory. It is not the North that has been avaricious 
of land, but the South that needed the land for the exten- 
sion of their slave system. Now, we are striving for the 
territory that belongs to the Union. \^Hear, hear.'] Let 
me see that man who dares to say here that he believes in 
the kind of patriotism that would let every citizen sit still 
while their territory was dismembered, and never raise a 
hand or lift a sword ? If that is your idea of patriotism, it 
is not mine. I have taught my people, and I have prac- 
ticed the doctrine myself as far as necessary, that it was 
the duty of every Christian to defend his house, and if any 
robber broke into his house, that he was bound to resist, 
and recover any goods that might have been carried off. 
Now that which is true of the householder, I declare to be 
true of the nation. The love of country means this, to 
defend every part and particle of the country from unjust 
alienation. \^Loi/d applause.] It amounts then to just this, 
that we are trying to get back our own; though Lord 
John Russell— I beg his pardon. Earl Russell — \_/ai/g/iter'] — 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 511 

says that we were ambitious of territory ! Well, here come 
two men before a Justice of the Peace, the one with the 
other by the coat. The one says: " I found this man in my 
house carrying off my wife's silks, finery, and jewels." 
Suppose the Justice to remonstrate with the complainant, 
and reprimand him for avarice, and blandly let the thief 
go without a word ! What would become of a community 
in which the victim of robbery was scolded and the robber 
set free ? \^Applause^ Now the territory in question was 
paid for by the money of the Union, and we swore by as 
solemn an oath as people can swear to hold it for the good 
of the nation. Because we are striving to keep our oath, 
I do not see how that can make us ambitious of territory. 
\Hear, hear; and applaitsei\ On the other side. Earl Russell 
says the South are contending for independence. Yes they 
are, and I would to God that so much gallantry had a 
better cause. It needs but that, to be illustrious to the end 
of time. [C/ieers.] Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to 
say, that we have not in that Western Continent degen- 
erated from your British blood. There is high spirit yet 
in America just as much as there is here. [App/ause.] 

Yet, Southern independence^ — what is it ? When they 
seceded and went to Montgomery to frame a Constitution, 
what did they do ? They made one or two little alterations 
in the old Constitution. They lengthened the term of the 
Presidency, and made a few alterations in the forms of 
procedures in the Congress; but substantially they took 
the same Constitution that they had just escaped from. 
[^Hear, hear.] The only material clause they added was 
the one that made slavery perpetual, and declared it to 
be illegal to undertake to abolish it. What then is South- 
ern independence ? It is the meteor around the dark body 
of slavery. King Bomba of Naples wanted to be inde- 
pendent, and his idea of independence was, that he should 
be let alone whilst he was oppressing his subjects. This 
very idea of independence has been the same, since the 
days when Nimrod hunted men. \^Laiighter and cheers.] 
This is the only independence the South is fighting for. 

But it is said, that the North is just as bad as the South 



512 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

in its hatred for the negro. At one time I admit that there 
was a prejudice against the black man, arising out of the 
poHtical condition of things; but I can bear witness that 
this prejudice has almost entirely passed away, in so far as 
the native population is concerned. \Cheersi\ I shall not 
say who are the bitterest enemies of the black men, because 
you would hiss me if I did so. \^Loiid cries of " Speak out," 
and a voice, '■''The Irishmen'' — another voice, '■'■ The Irish Ro- 
man Catholics."^ There is no doubt that the Irish have a 
strong prejudice against the negroes, but it arises simply 
from this, that they have been led to believe by the ene- 
mies of the North, that, were the slaves freed, they would 
dispute the field of labor with them; whereas everybody 
who knew anything of their disposition could tell, that, 
were they freed, the Northern negroes would flock to the 
South, leaving the North for Northern laborers. 

The statement has been made that the Americans are 
seeking to destroy the Anglo-Saxons for the sake of a few 
millions of negroes. I contend, that, although the freedom 
of the negroes will no doubt result from this war, yet we 
are fighting for the good of all mankind — black, white, and 
yellow \Jaiighter'\, for men of all nations — to save represent- 
ative government and universal liberty. It is also said, 
that the proclamation by the President was not sincere — 
that he had issued it merely as an official, and that it did 
not express his personal convictions. All I need to reply, 
is, that the President, whatever his own feelings, is bound 
to act as an official and discharge the duties of his office. 
He is bound to administer the Constitution of the country. 
It was the President and not the man who spoke; and it 
was the country, and not the President, that was respon- 
sible for the proclamation. At the same time I affirm, that 
the manner in which all these proclamations have been 
carried out is a sufficient test of their sincerity. The Pres- 
ident was very loath to take the steps he did; but, though 
slow, Abraham Lincoln was sure. A thousand men could 
not make him plant his foot before he was ready; ten 
thousand could not move it after he had put it down. This 
national crisis in my own country is a spectacle worthy of 



SPEECH IN EDINBURGH. 513 

the admiration of the world, and I can only hope that when 
next the Social Science Congress assembles, this great con- 
flict will have gone so far towards an issue, that it may be 
found consistent with duty to inaugurate its meeting with- 
out sneering at a neighboring nation. \Great checri/ig and 
/lisses.^ 

I have a closing word to speak. It is our duty in Amer- 
ica, by every means in our power, to avoid all cause of 
irritation with every foreign nation, and with the English 
nation most especially. On your side it is your duty to 
avoid all irritating interference, and all speech that tends 
to irritate. Brothers should be brothers all the world over, 
and you are of our blood, and we are of your lineage. May 
that day be far distant when Great Britain and i\merica 
shall turn their backs on each other, and seek an alliance 
with other nations. \^Loud cries of '^^ Russia."^ The day is 
coming when the foundations of the earth will be lifted 
out of their places; and there are two nations that ought 
to be found shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand for the 
sake of Christianity and. universal liberty, and these nations 
are Great Britain and America. [Loud and prolonged cheer- 

At the close of Mr. Beecher's address Dr. Alexander came for- 
ward and was received with loud applause. He said: "Ladies 
and gentlemen, the resolution which I have had put into my 
hands is the following : — 

"'That this meeting most earnestly and emphatically protests against 
American slavery in all its ramifications, as a system which treats immortal 
and redeemed human beings as goods and chattels, which denies them the 
rights of marriage and of home, which consigns them to ignorance of the 
first rudiments of education, and exposes them to the outrages of lust and 
passion; and that this meeting is therefore of opinion that it should be 
totally abolished; and, further, that this meeting, rejoicing in the progress 
which has already been made in America towards this end, desires to en- 
courage, with their cordial sympathy, the earnest Abolitionists in that 
country in the noble efforts they are making.' 

" I do not think that it is necessary that I should offer any 
observations in support of this resolution. After the magnificent 
oration to which we have just listened, I do not feel myself in- 
clined at all to intrude in the way of speaking upon this question, 
33 



514 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and I presume the meeting is not at all inclined to hear anything 
I might be disposed to say. I do not think the motion which has 
been put into my hands requires very much to be said in support 
of it. I think it is exceedingly moderate, rather more moderate 
than perhaps I should have expressed it, had it been in my own 
words. [Applause.^ I think it pledges us to nothing but what 
we may heartily agree to [loud applause], from our abhorrence of 
slavery, our desire to see that feeling acknowledged, and our sym- 
pathy with those who are trying to abolish it in America. Some 
may perhaps think that in the resolution we might directly sym- 
pathize with the Federals in their struggle, but that might prob- 
ably lead to a division in the meeting. I would venture' to sug- 
gest that our esteemed friend has gone very far to show that the 
Northerners, as such, are Abolitionists. Those who think that 
he has made out that point might interpret the latter part of this 
resolution to mean the whole of the Federals as a body ; and those 
who do not think that might restrict it in their own minds to suit 
their views." [Laiig/iter.'\ 

Dr. George Johnston then came forward amid loud cheers, and 
said : " It is not necessary that I should say one word in second- 
ing the motion. I am quite satisfied that this meeting is perfectly 
unanimous in accepting the sentiments expressed in the motion, 
and why, therefore, should I occupy more time. [Applause.] Just 
let me say this one word, that I apprehend that the magnificent 
speech of our friend Mr. Beecher Stowe — [loud laugJiter] — I mean 
Mr. Ward Beecher — has removed some prejudices [hear, hear], 
has given some information which, if rightly used, will guide us 
to the same conclusion to which I long ago came — viz., that the 
North is banded together to maintain the liberties of mankind." 
[Loud applause.] 

A show of hands was then taken, when only three were held 
up against the resolution, which was carried amidst loud and 
prolonged cheering. 



SPEECH IN THE PHILHARMONIC 
HALL, LIVERPOOL. 

October i6, 1863. 



The hall was crowded in every part. Immediately upon the 
doors being opened the hall was filled, and the aspect of the 
audience showed that the proceedings were anticipated with no 
little eagerness. Mr. Charles Robertson was the chairman of the 
evening. 

On the entrance of Mr. Beecher, preceded by the chairman, a 
vast shout of mingled welcome and disapprobation was imme- 
diately raised. Placards had been posted throughout the town 
inciting the people of Liverpool to give the lecturer a hostile re- 
ception ; and it soon became evident that a determined minority 
of the meeting were present with that intention. The extent to 
which their exertions, which were sedulously continued through- 
out, interfered with the proceedings, will be perceived by the re- 
port. 

Charles Robertson, Esq., on rising to introduce the lecturer, 
was received with loud cheers and hisses. After obtaining si- 
lence he said : " Ladies and gentlemen, we are met here to- 
night to hear an address from the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. 
[Cheers and hisses?[ I hope, gentlemen, this is an assembly of 
Englishmen [hear, hear], and that everybody will be heard with 
calmness and impartiality. [Hear, hear.] Well, gentlemen, we 
are met together this evening to receive such information from 
Mr. Beecher as he has it in his power to communicate to us re- 
specting the present state of the contest now going on in the 
United States of America, and its bearing on that most impor- 
tant question which has so powerfully stirred the hearts of En- 
glishmen, the question of the emancipation of the negro race. 
[Loud applause and hisses.] I need not say to you, gentlemen, it 
is that aspect of the question which has induced many of us to 
take a part in this meeting. It is because we believe that this is 
a contest which has a most important bearing on the emancipa- 
tion of the negro race, and the introduction, to a larger portion 



5l6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

of the population of the Southern States, of those rights and 
hberties which, as men, they ought to possess — that we have 
taken a deep interest in this struggle, believing that the success 
of the Northern States will lead to the emancipation of the slave. 
\" No, no," hisses and cheers?[ .... It is with no unfriendly 
feelings to the South that I say these things. They are our own 
kinsmen as well as the people of the North. We have admired 
their courage and unflinching devotedness to what they believe a 
right cause. {Applause?^ But we are equally convinced that 
their cause is wrong. [Loud cries of " No, no," and "Hear, /lear."] 
If there is a righteous God in Heaven, we believe that cause can- 
not prosper." [Renewed interritptio7i?^ The chairman concluded 
by asking the respectful attention of the audience to Mr. Beecher's 
address, adding that that gentleman was perfectly prepared to 
answer any questions that might be addressed to him after the 
lecture, provided they were put in writing, with the name of the 
writer attached, and handed up to the chairman. \;' Oh, oh."\ 

Mr. Beecher then rose, and, advancing to the front of the plat- 
form, was greeted with mingled cheers, hisses, and groans. A 
considerable proportion of the audience stood up, waving hats 
and handkerchiefs, and cheering. A man in the gallery called 
for "Three cheers for the Southern States," which created much 
laughter and some uproar. Mr. Beecher proceeded to say — 
" Ladies and gentlemen," when the uproar again commenced, and 
efforts were made to eject one noisy individual from the body of 
the hall. 

The chairman said : " A fair opportunity will be afforded to 
express approval or dissent at the close of the lecture, but if any 
one interrupts the meeting by disorderly conduct, I shall be 
obliged to call in the aid of the police." [Cheers?\ 

Mr. Beecher then spoke: — 

For more than twenty-five years I have been made per- 
fectly familiar with popular assemblies in all parts of my 
country except the extreme South. There has not for the 
whole of that time been a single day of my life when it 
would have been safe for me to go south of Mason's and 
Dixon's line in my own country, and all for one reason: 
my solemn, earnest, persistent testimony against that w^hich 
I consider to be the most atrocious thing under the sun — 
the system of American slavery in a great free republic. 
\Cheers?[ I have passed through that early period, when 
right of free speech was denied to me. Again and again 



SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. $iy 

I have attempted to address audiences that, for no other 
crime than that of free speech, visited me with all manner 
of contumelious epithets ; and now since I have been in En- 
gland, although I have met with greater kindness and 
courtesy on the part of most than I deserved, yet, on the 
other hand, I perceive that the Southern influence prevails 
to some extent in England. \^AppIaiise and uproar.'\ It is 
my old acquaintance ; I understand it perfectly \Jai/ghter\, 
and I have always held it to be an unfailing truth that 
where a man had a cause that would bear examination he 
was perfectly willing to have it spoken about. \^Applause.'\ 
And when in Manchester I saw those huge placards, "Who 
is Henry Ward Beecher?" \laughter, cries of ''^ Quite right,'' 
and applause^ — and when in Liverpool I was told that 
there were those blood -red placards, purporting to say 
what Henry Ward Beecher had said, and calling upon 
Englishmen to suppress free speech — I tell you what I 
thought. I thought simply this — " I am glad of it." \^Laugh- 
ter.] Why ? Because if they had felt perfectly secure, 
that you are the minions of the South and the slaves of 
slavery, they would have been perfectly still. {Applause 
and uproar.'\ And, therefore, when I saw so much nervous 
apprehension that, if I were permitted to speak [/lisses and 
applause^ — when I found they were afraid to have me speak 
y/iisses, laughter, and ^^No, no "], — when I found that they con- 
sidered my speaking damaging to their cause \applause'\ — 
when I found that they appealed from facts and reasonings 
to mob law {applause and uproar\ I said: No man need 
tell me what the heart and secret counsel of these men 
are. They tremble, and are afraid. {Applause, laughter, 
hisses, ^'No, no, "and a voice: ^'JVew York mob."^ Now, per- 
sonally, it is a matter of very little consequence to me 
whether I sf^eak hereto-night or not. {Laughter and cheers.] 
But, one thing is very certain — if you do permit me to 
speak here to-night you will hear very plain talking. {Ap- 
plause and hisses.'] You will not find a man {^interruption], 
— you will not find me to be a man that dared to speak 
about Great Britain three thousand miles off, and then is 
afraid to speak to Great Britain when he stands on her 



5l8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

shores. [^Iiiinicnse applause and /nsses.'\ And if I do not mis- 
take the tone and the temper of Englishmen, they had 
rather have a man who opposes them in a manly way [ap- 
plause from all parts of the hall^ than a sneak that agrees 
with them in an unmanly way. [Applause and "Bravo^^ If 
I can carry you with me by sound convictions, I shall be 
immensely glad [applause'] ; but if I cannot carry you with 
me by facts and sound arguments, I do not wish you to 
go with me at all; and all that I ask is simply fair play. 
[Applause, and avoiee: ''''You shall have it, loo."] Those of 
you who are kind enough to wish to favor my speaking — 
and you will observe that my voice is slightly husky, from 
having spoken almost every night in succession for some 
time past — those who wish to hear me will do me the kind- 
ness simply to sit still and to keep still; and I and my 
friends the Secessionists will. make all the noise. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

There are two dominant races in modern history. The 
Germanic and the Romanic races. The Germanic races 
tend to personal liberty, to a sturdy individualism, to civil 
and to political liberty. The Romanic race tends to absolu- 
tism in government; it is clannish; it loves chieftains; it 
develops a people that crave strong and showy govern- 
ments to support and plan for them. The Anglo-Saxon 
race belongs to the great German family, and is a fair ex- 
ponent of its peculiarities. The Anglo-Saxon carries self- 
government and self-development with him wherever he 
goes. He has popular government and popular industry; 
for the effects of a generous civil liberty are not seen a 
whit more plain in the good order, in the intelligence, and 
in the virtue of a self-governing people, than in their amaz- 
ing enterprise and the scope and power of their creative 
industry. The power to create riches is just as much a 
part of the Anglo-Saxon virtues as the power to create 
good order and social safety. The things required for 
prosperous labor, prosperous manufactures, and prosper- 
ous commerce are three. First, liberty; second, liberty; 
third, liberty. [Hear, hear.] Though these are not merely 
the same liberty, as I shall show you. 



SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. 519 

First, there must be liberty to follow those laws of busi- 
ness which experience has developed, without imposts or 
restrictions, or governmental intrusions. Business simply 
wants to be let alone. \^Hear, hear.'\ Then, secondly, 
there must be liberty to distribute and exchange products 
of industry in any market without burdensome tariffs, 
without imposts, and without vexatious regulations. 
There must be these two liberties — liberty to create wealth, 
as the makers of it think best according to the light and 
experience which business has given them; and then lib- 
erty to distribute what they have created without unneces- 
sary vexatious burdens. The comprehensive law of the ideal 
industrial condition of the world is free manufacture and 
free-trade. \^Hear, hear; a voice: " The Morrill tariff." 
Another voice: "Monroe."'\ I have said there were three 
elements of liberty. The third is the necessity of an in- 
telligent and free race of customers. There must be free- 
dom among producers; there must be freedom among the 
distributers; there must be freedom among the customers. 
It may not have occurred to you that it makes any differ- 
ence what one's customers are; but it does, in all regular 
and prolonged business. The condition of the customer 
determines how much he will buy, determines of what sort 
he will buy. Poor and ignorant people buy little and that 
of the poorest kind. The richest and the intelligent, having 
the more means to buy, buy the most, and alwaj^s buy the 
best. Here then are the three liberties — liberty of the pro- 
ducer; liberty of the distributer; and liberty of the con- 
sumer. The first two need no discussion, they have been 
long thoroughly and brilliantly illustrated by the political 
economists of Great Britain, and by her eminent states- 
men; but it seems to me that enough attention has not 
been directed to the third; and, with your patience, I will 
dwell on that for a moment, before proceeding to other 
topics. 

It is a necessity of every manufacturing and commercial 
people that their customers should be very wealthy and in- 
telligent. Let us put the subject before you in the familiar 
light of your own local experience. To whom do the 



520 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

tradesmen of Liverpool sell the most goods at the highest 
profit? To the ignorant and poor, or to the educated and 
prosperous ? \A twice : " To the Southerners." Laughterl\ 
The poor man buys simply for his body; he buys food, he 
buys clothing, he buys fuel, he buys lodging. His rule is 
to buy the least and the cheapest that he can. He goes to 
the store as seldom as he can, — he brings away as little as 
he can, — and he buys for the least he can. \^Mnch laugh- 
ter^ Poverty is not a misfortune to the poor only who 
suffer it, but it is more or less a misfortune to all with 
whom they deal. On the other hand, a man well off, — 
how is it with him ? He buys in far greater quantity. He 
can afford to do it; he has the money to pay for it. He 
buys in far greater variety, because he seeks to gratify not 
merely physical wants, but also mental wants. He buys 
for the satisfaction of sentiment and taste, as well as of 
sense. He buys silk, wool, flax, cotton; he buys all metals 
— iron, silver, gold, platinum; in short he buys for all 
necessities and of all substances. But that is not all. He 
buys a better quality of goods. He buys richer silks, finer 
cottons, higher grained wools. Now, a rich silk means so 
much skill and care of somebody's that has been expended 
upon it to make it finer and richer; and so of cotton, and 
so of wool. That is, the price of the finer goods runs back 
to the very beginning, and remunerates the workman as 
well as the merchant. Indeed, the whole laboring com- 
munity is as much interested and profited as the mere 
merchant, in this buying and selling of the higher grades 
in the greater varieties and quantities. The law of price 
is the skill; and the amount of skill expended in the work 
is as much for the market as are the goods. A man comes 
to the market and says, " I have a pair of hands," and he 
obtains the lowest wages. Another man comes and says, 
" I have something more than a pair of hands; I have 
truth and fidelity; " he gets a higher price. Another man 
comes and says, " I have something more; I have hands 
and strength, and fidelity, and skill." He gets more than 
either of the others. The next man comes and says, " I 
have got hands and strength, and skill, and fidelity; but 



SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. 521 

my hands work more than that. They know how to create 
things for the fancy, for the affections, for the moral senti- 
ments; " and he gets more than either of the others. The 
last man comes and says, " I have all these qualities, and 
have them so highly that it is a peculiar genius; " and 
genius carries the whole market and gets the highest 
price. \^Loud applause.'] So that both the workman and 
the merchant are profited by having purchasers that de- 
mand quality, variety, and quantity. Now, if this be so in 
the town or the city, it can only be so because it is a 
law. This is the specific development of a general or uni- 
versal law, and therefore we should expect to find it as 
true of a nation as of a city like Liverpool. I know it is 
so, and you know that it is true of all the world; and it is 
just as important to have customers educated, intelligent, 
moral, and rich, out of Liverpool as it is in Liverpool. \_Ap- 
plaiise.] They are able to buy; they want variety, they 
want the very best; and those are the customers you want. 
That nation is the best customer that is freest, because 
freedom works prosperity, industry, and wealth. Great 
Britain then, aside from moral considerations, has a direct 
commercial and pecuniary interest in the liberty, civiliza- 
tion, and wealth of every people and every nation on the 
globe. \Loud applause^ You have also an interest in this, 
because you are a moral and a religious people. ["6>/z, 
<?//," laughter., aud applause^ You desire it from the highest 
motives; and godliness is profitable in all things, having 
the promise of the life that is, as well as of that which is to 
come; but if there were no hereafter, and if man had no 
progress in this life, and if there were no question of moral 
growth at all, it would be worth your while to protect civili- 
zation and liberty, merely as a commercial speculation. 
To evangelize has more than a moral and religious import 
— it comes back to temporal relations. Wherever a nation 
that is crushed, cramped, degraded under despotism, is 
struggling to be free, you, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, 
Paisley, all have an interest that that nation should be 
free. When depressed and backward people demand that 
they may have a chance to rise — Hungary, Italy, Poland 



522 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

— it is a duty for humanity's sake, it is a duty for the 
highest moral motives, to sympathize with them; but be- 
side all these there is a material and an interested reason 
why you should sympathize with them. Pounds and pence 
join with conscience and with honor in this design. 

Now, Great Britain's chief want is — what? They have 
said that your chief want is cotton. I deny it. Your 
chief want is consumers. [Applause and hisses^ You have 
got skill, you have got capital, and you have got ma- 
chinery enough to manufacture goods for the whole popu- 
lation of the globe. You could turn out fourfold as much 
as you do, if you only had the market to sell in. It is not 
therefore so much the want of fabric, though there may 
be a temporary obstruction of that; but the principal and 
increasing want — increasing from year to year — is, where 
shall we find men to buy what we can manufacture so 
fast? [^Interruption, and a voice, '■''The Morrill tariff" and 
applauseA^ Before the American war broke out, your ware- 
houses were loaded with goods that you could not sell. 
\_Applause and hisses.^^ You had over-manufactured; what 
is the meaning of over-manufacturing but this, that you 
had skill, capital, machinery, to create faster than you had 
customers to take goods off your hands ? And you know 
that, rich as Great Britain is, vast as are her manufact- 
ures, if she could have fourfold the present demand she 
could make fourfold riches to-morrow; and every political 
economist will tell you that your want is not cotton pri- 
marily, but customers. Therefore the doctrine How to 
make customers, is a great deal more important to Great 
Britain than the doctrine How to raise cotton. It is to 
that doctrine I ask from you, business men, practical men, 
men of fact, sagacious Englishmen — to that point I ask a 
moment's attention. \^Shouts of " Oh, oh," hisses, and 
applausel\ 

There are no more continents to be discovered. \^Hear, 
hear.^ The market of the future must be found — how? 
There is very little hope of any more demand being 
created by new fields. If you are to have a better market 
there must be some kind of process invented to make the 



SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. 523 

old fields better. \A voice, ^^Tell us something new,'' shouts 
of " Order" and interruption^ Let us look at it, then. You 
must civilize the world in order to make a better class of 
purchasers. ^Interruption^ If you were to press Italy- 
down again under the feet of despotism, Italy, discour- 
aged, could draw but very few supplies from you. But 
give her liberty, kindle schools throughout her valleys, 
spur her industry, make treaties with her by which she 
can exchange her wine, and her oil, and her silk for your 
manufactured goods; and for every effort that you make 
in that direction there will come back profit to you by in- 
creased traffic with her. \^Loud applause.'] If Hungary 
asks to be an unshackled nation — if by freedom she will 
rise in virtue and intelligence, then by freedom she will 
acquire a more multifarious industry, which she will be 
willing to exchange for your manufactures. Her liberty 
is to be found — where ? You will find it in the Word of 
God, you will find it in the code of history; but you will 
also find it in the Price Current \^iiear, hear]; and every 
free nation, every civilized people — every people that rises 
from barbarism to industry and intelligence, becomes a 
better customer. A savage is a man of one story, and that 
one story a cellar. When man begins to be civilized, he 
raises another story. When you Christianize and civilize 
the man, you put story upon story, for you develop 
faculty after faculty; and you have to supply every story 
with your productions. The savage is a man one story 
deep; the civilized man is thirty stories deep. [App/ajtse.] 
Now if you go to a lodging-house, where there are three 
or four men, your sales to them may, no doubt, be worth 
something; but if you go to a lodging-house like some of 
those which I saw in Edinburgh, which seemed to contain 
about twenty stories — ["Oh, oh," and interruption] — every 
story of which is full, and all who occupy buy of you — 
which is the best customer — the man who is drawn out, or 
the man who is pinched up ? [Laughteri] 

There is in this a great and sound principle of political 
economy. [" Yah ! yah ! " from the passage outside the hall, 
and loud laughter^ If the South should be rendered inde- 



524 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

pendent — \at this juncture mingled cheering and hisses became 
immense; half the audience rose to their feet, waving hats and 
handkerchiefs, and in every part of the hall there zuas the great- 
est commotion and uproar. Mr. Beecher quietly and sinilingly 
waited until quiet ivas restored, and then proceeded^ Well, you 
have had your turn; now let me have mine again. \Loud 
applause and laughter.'\ It is a little inconvenient to talk 
against the wind; but, after all, if you will just keep good- 
natured — I am not going to lose my temper; will you watch 
yours ? [^Applause.^ Besides all that, — it rests me, and gives 
me a chance, you know, to get my breath. \^Applause and 
hisses.'l And I think that the bark of those men is worse 
than their bite. They do not mean any harm — they don't 
k no w any better. \^Loud laughter, applause, hisses, and continued 
uproarl\ I was saying, when these responses broke in, that 
it was worth our while to consider both alternatives. What 
will be the result if this present struggle shall eventuate in 
the separation of America, and making the South — \loud ap- 
plause, hisses, hooting, and cries of '■'■Bravo !"\ — a slave terri- 
tory exclusively — \cries of '■'No, no" and laughter^ — and the 
North a free territory; what will be the first result ? You 
will lay the foundation for carrying the slave population 
clear through to the Pacific Ocean. That is the first step. 
There is not a man who has been a leader of the South 
any time within these twenty years, that has not had this 
for a plan. It was for this that Texas was invaded, first 
by colonists, next by marauders, until it was wrested from 
Mexico. It was for this that they engaged in the Mexican 
war itself, by which the vast territory reaching to the 
Pacific was added to the Union. Never have they for a 
moment given up the plan of spreading the American in- 
stitution, as they call it, straight through towards the West, 
until the slave, who has washed his feet in the Atlantic, 
shall be carried to w^ash them in the Pacific. \Cries of 
"Question," and jproar.'] There ! I have got that statement 
out, and you cannot put it back. {^Laughter and applause?^ 
Now, let us consider the prospect. If the South become 
a slave empire, what relation will it have to you as a cus- 
tomer? \^A voice: "Or any other man." Laughter^ It 



SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. . 525 

would be an empire of twelve millions of people. Of these, 
eight millions are white and four millions black. S^A voice: 
''How many Jiave you got? " — applause and laughter. Another 
voice: ''Free your oic/i slaves."^ Consider that one-third of 
the whole are the miserably poor, unbuying blacks. [^Cries 
of "No, 710,'" " Yes, yes," and interruption.^ You do not man- 
ufacture much for them. [^Plisses, "Oh!" "No."^ You 
have not got machinery coarse enough. \_Laughter, and 
" iV(?."] Your labor is too skilled by far to manufacture 
bagging and linsey-woolsey. [.4 Southerner : " JVe are 
S[oing to free them every one."^ Then you and I agree ex- 
actly. [Laughter.] One other third consists of a poor, 
unskilled, degraded white population; and the remaining 
one-third, which is a large allowance, we will say, intelli- 
gent and rich. Now here are twelve millions of people, 
and only one-third of them are customers that can afford to 
buy the kind of goods that you bring to market. [Inter- 
ruption and uproar.] My friends, I saw a man once, who 
was a little late at a railway station, chase an express 
train. He did not catch it. [Laughter.] If you are going 
to stop this meeting, you have got to stop it before I 
speak; for after I have got the things out, you may chase 
as long as you please — you will not catch them. [Laughter 
and interruption^^ But there is luck in leisure; I'm going 
to take it easy. [Laughter i\ Two-thirds of the population 
of the Southern States to-day are non-purchasers of En- 
glish goods. [A voice: "No, they are ?wt;" "No, no," and 
uproar^ You must recollect another fact — namely, that 
this is going on clear through to the Pacific Ocean; and if 
by sympathy or help you establish a slave empire, you 
sagacious Britons — [" Oh, oh," and hooting] — if 3'ou like it 
better, then, I will leave the adjective out — [laughter, hear, 
and applause] — are busy in favoring the establishment of 
an empire from ocean to ocean that should have fewest 
customers and the largest non-buying population. [Ap- 
plause, "No, no." A voice: " I thought it was the happy people 
that populated fastest."] 

Now, for instance, just look at this, the difference be- 
tween free labor and slave -labor to produce cultivated 



526 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

land. The State of Virginia has 15,000 more square miles 
of land than the State of New York; but Virginia has only 
15,000 square miles improved, while New York has 20,000 
square miles improved. Of unimproved land Virginia has 
about 23,000 square miles, and New York only about 10,- 
000 square miles. These facts speak volumes as to the 
capacity of the territory to bear population. The smaller 
is the quantity of soil uncultivated, the greater is the 
density of the population — \Jiear, hear]; — and upon that, 
their value as customers depends. Let us take the States 
of Maryland and Massachusetts. Maryland has 2,000 
more square miles of land than Massachusetts; but Mary- 
land has about 4,000 square miles of land improved, Mas- 
sachusetts has 3,200 square miles. Maryland has 2,800 
unimproved square miles of land, while Massachusetts has 
but 1,800 square miles unimproved. But these two are 
little States, — let us take greater States : Pennsylvania 
and Georgia. The State of Georgia has 12,000 more 
square miles of land than Pennsylvania. Georgia has only 
about 9,800 square miles of improved land, Pennsylvania 
has 13,400 square miles of improved land, or about 2,300,- 
000 acres more than Georgia. Georgia has about 25,600 
square miles of unimproved land, and Pennsylvania has 
only 10,400 square miles, or about 10,000,000 acres less of 
?//Hm proved land than Georgia. The one is a Slave State 
and the other is a Free State. I do not want you to for- 
get such statistics as those, having once heard them. 
\^Langhfer.'] Now, what can England make for the poor 
white population of such a future empire, and for her slave 
population ? What carpets, what linens, what cottons can 
you sell to them ? What machines, what looking-glasses, 
what combs, what leather, what books, what pictures, what 
engravings? \^A voice: ^^ J Veil sell them ships."] You may 
sell ships to a few, but what ships can you sell to two- 
thirds of the population of poor whites and blacks ? {^Ap- 
plause.] A little bagging and a little linsey-woolsey, a few 
whips and manacles, are all that you can sell for the slave. 
{Great applause, and uproar.] This very day, in the Slave 
States of America there are eight millions out of twelve 



SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. 527 

millions that are not, and cannot be your customers from 
the very laws of trade. \A voice: " Then how are they 
clothed "i " a?id continued interruptionl\ 

The chairman finally said : If gentlemen will only sit down, 
those who are making the disturbance will be tired out. 

Mr. Beecher resumed: There are some apparent draw- 
backs that may suggest themselves. The first is that the 
interests of England consist in drawing from any country 
its raw material. \^A voice: '''■ We have got over that."'\ There 
is an interest, but it is not now the chief interest of England. 
The interest of England is not merely where to buy her cot- 
ton, her ores, her wool, her linens, and her flax. When she 
has put her brains into the cotton, and into the linen and 
flax, and it becomes the product of her looms, a far more 
important question is. What can be done with it ? En- 
gland does not want merely to pay prices for that which 
brute labor produces, but to get a price for that which brain 
labor produces. \IIear., hear., and applause^ Your interest 
lies beyond all peradventure in customers; therefore, if you 
should bring ever so much cotton from the slave-empire — 
[" Yah^ yah "] — you cannot sell back to the slave-empire. \^A 
voice: '"''Go on with your subject; we know all about £ngiand."^ 
Excuse me, sir, I am the speaker, not you; and it is forme 
to determine what to say. [^Hear, hear.] Do you suppose I 
am going to speak about America except to convince En- 
glishmen ? I am here to talk to you for the sake of ulti- 
mately carrying you with me in judgment and in thinking 
— [" Oh ! oh ! "]— however, as to this logic of cat-calls, it is 
slavery logic, — I am used to it. \_Applause, hisses and 
cheers.] Now, it is said that if the South should be 
allowed to be separate there will be no tariff, and England 
can trade with her; but, if the South remains in the 
United States it will be bound by a tariff, and English 
goods will be excluded from it [^interruption']. Well, I am 
not going to shirk any question of that kind. In the first 
place, let me tell you that the first tariff ever proposed in 
America was not only supported by Southern interests and 
votes, but was originated by the peculiar structure of 
Southern society. The first and chief difficulty — after the 



528 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Union was formed under our present Constitution — the 
first difficulty that met our fathers was, how to raise taxes 
to support the government; and the question of represen- 
tation and taxes went together; and the difficulty was, 
whether we should tax the North and South alike, man 
for man per caput, counting the slaves with whites. The 
North having fewer slaves in comparison with the number 
of its whites; the South, which had a larger number of 
blacks, said, " We shall be overtaxed if this system be 
adopted." They therefore proposed that taxes and repre- 
sentation should be on the basis of five black men counting 
as three white men. In a short time it was found impossi- 
ble to raise these taxes in the South, and then they cast about 
for a better way, and the tariff scheme was submitted. 
The object was to raise the revenue from the ports instead 
of from the people. The tariff therefore had its origin 
in Southern weaknesses and necessities, and not in the 
Northern cities \loud opplausc\ Daniel Webster's first 
speech was against it; but after that was carried by South- 
ern votes (which for more than fifty years determined the 
law of the country). New England accepted it, and saying. 
"It is the law of the land," conformed her industry to it; 
and when she got her capital embarked in mills and 
machinery, she became in favor of it. But the South, be- 
ginning to feel, as she grew stronger, that it was against 
her interest to continue the system, sought to have the 
tariff modified, and brought it down; though Henry Clay, 
a Southern man himself, was the immortal champion of 
the tariff. All his life-time he was for a high tariff, till such 
a tariff could no longer stand; and then he was for moder- 
ating the tariffs. But there has not been for the whole of 
the fifty years a single hour when any tariff could be passed 
without the South. The opinion of the whole of America 
was, Tariff, high tariff. I do not mean that there v/ere none 
that dissented from that opinion, but it was the popular and 
prevalent cry. I have lived to see the time when, just be- 
fore the war broke out, it might be said that the thinking 
men of America were ready for free-trade. There has been 
a steady progress throughout America for free-trade ideas. 



SPEECH /A' LIVERPOOL. 529 

How, then, came this Morrill tariff ? The Democratic 
administration, inspired by Southern counsels, left millions 
of millions of unpaid debt to cramp the incoming of 
Lincoln; and the government, betrayed to the Southern 
States, found itself unable to pay those debts, unable to 
build a single ship, unable to raise an army; and it was the 
exigency, the necessity, that forced them to adopt the Mor- 
rill tariff, in order to raise the money which they required. 
It was the South that obliged the North to put the tariff 
on. \Applause ami uproar^ Just as soon as we begin to 
have peace again, and can get our national debt into a 
proper shape as you have got yours — \laughter\ — the same 
cause that worked before will begin to work again; and 
there is nothing more certain in the future than that 
America is bound to join with Great Britain in the world- 
wide doctrine of free-trade. \Applause and inten-iiption?[ 

Here then, so far as this argument is concerned, I rest 
my case, saying that it seems to me that in an argument 
addressed to a commercial people it was perfectly fair to 
represent that their commercial and manufacturing inter- 
ests tallied with their moral sentiments; and as by birth, 
by blood, by history, by moral feeling, and by everything, 
Great Britain is connected with the liberty of the world, 
God has joined interest and conscience, head and heart; 
so that you ought to be in favor of liberty everywhere. 
\Gj-eat appiause.'\ There ! I have got quite a speech out 
already, if I do not get any more. [^Hisses ami appiausei\ 

Now then, leaving this for a time, let me turn to some 
other nearly connected topics. It is said that the South is 
fighting for just that independence of which I have been 
speaking. \^Hear, hear.'] But the South is divided on that 
subject. \_'' -iVo, no.'"] There are twelve millions in the 
South. Four millions of them are asking for their liberty. 
["iVi?, «(?," hisses, ^' Ves," appiause and interruption^ Four 
millions are asking for their liberty. [^Continued interrup- 
tion, and renewed applause^ Eight millions are banded 
together to prevent it. Y^No, no,'' hisses, and appiause.] 
That is what they asked the world to recognize as a strike 
for independence. \^H'ear, hear, and iaughter.] Eight 



530 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

million white men fighting to prevent the liberty of four 
million black men. challenging the world. \^Uproar, hisses, 
applause, and continued interruption^ You cannot get over 
the fact. There it is; like iron, you cannot stir it. \Up- 
roar.] They went out of the Union because slave-property 
was not recognized in it. There were two ways of reaching 
slave-property in the Union: the one by exerting the direct 
Federal authority: but they could not do that, for they 
conceived it to be forbidden. The second was by indirect 
influence. If you put a candle under a bowl it will burn 
so long as the fresh air lasts, but it will go out as soon as 
the oxygen is exhausted; and so, if you put slavery into a 
State where it cannot get more States, it is only a question 
of time how soon it will die. By limiting slave territory 
you lay the foundation for the final extinction of slavery. 
[Applause.] Gardeners say that the reason why crops will 
not grow in the same ground for a long time together, is 
that the roots excrete poisoned matter which the plants 
cannot use, and thus poison the grain. Whether this is 
true of crops or not, it is certainly true of slavery, for slav- 
ery poisons the land on which it grows. Look at the old 
Slave States, — Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, and even at the newer State of Missouri. 
What is the condition of slavery in those States ? It is not 
worth one cent, except to breed. It is not worth one cent 
so far as productive energy goes. They cannot make 
money by their slaves in those States. The first reason 
with them for maintaining slavery is, because it gives polit- 
ical power; and the second, because they breed for the 
Southern market. I do not stand on my own testimony 
alone. The editcrf- of the Virginia Times, in the year 1836, 
made a calculation that 120,000 slaves were sent out of the 
State during that year; 80,000 of whom went with their 
owners, and 40,000 were sold at the average price of 600 
dollars, amounting to 24,000,000 dollars in one year out of 
the State of Virginia. Now, what does Henry Clay, him- 
self a slave-owner, say about Kentucky ? In a speech before 
the Colonization Society, he said: "It is believed that 
nowhere in the farming portion of the United States would 



• SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. 53 1 

slave-labor be generally employed, if the proprietary were 
not compelled to raise slaves by the high price of the 
Southern market," and the only profit of slave property in 
the northern farming slave States is the value they bring. 
\^A voice: " Then if the Norther?iers breed to supply the South, 
whafs the difference ? "] So that if you were to limit slavery, 
and to say, it shall go so far and no further, it would be 
only a question of time when it should die of its own intrin- 
sic weakness and disease. This was the Northern feeling. 
The North was true to the doctrine of constitutional rights. 
The North refused, by any Federal action within the 
States, to violate the compacts of the Constitution, and left 
local compacts unimpaired; but feeling herself unbound 
with regard to what we call the Territories, — free land 
which has not yet State rights, — the North said there 
should be no more territory cursed with slavery. \^Ap- 
plause.^ With unerring instinct the South said, " The gov- 
ernment administered by Northern men on the principle 
that there shall be no more slave-territory, is a govern- 
ment fatal to slavery," and it was on that account that 
they seceded ["A^i;?, 7W," " Yes, yes,'' applause, hisses, and 
uproar\ — and the first step which they took when they as- 
sembled at Montgomery, was, to adopt a constitution. 
What constitution did they adopt ? The same form of con- 
stitution which they had just abandoned. What changes did 
they introduce? A trifling change about the Presidential 
term, making it two years longer; a slight change about 
some doctrine of legislation, involving no principle what- 
ever, but merely a question of policy. But by the consti- 
tution of Montgomery they legalized slavery, and made it 
the organic laiv of the land. The very Constitution which 
they said they could not live under when they left the 
Union they took again immediately afterwards, altering it 
in only one point, and that was, making the fundamental 
law of the land to be slavery. \^Hear, hear.l^ Let no man 
undertake to say in the face of intelligence — let no man 
undertake to delude an honest community — by saying that 
slavery had nothing to do with the Secession. Slavery is 
the framework of the South; it is the root and the branch 



532 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

of this conflict with the South. Take away slavery from 
the South, and she would not differ from us in any respect. 
There is not a single antagonistic interest. There is no 
difference of race, no difference of language, no difference 
of law, no difference of constitution; the only difference 
between us is, that free labor is in the North, and slave 
labor is in the South. \^Loud applause.^ 

But I know that you say, you cannot help sympathizing 
with a gallant people. \^Hear, hear.'\ They are the weaker 
people, the minority; and you cannot help going with the 
minority who are struggling for their rights against the 
majority. Nothing could be more generous, when a weak 
party stands for its own legitimate rights against impe- 
rious pride and power, than to sympathize with the weak. 
But who ever yet sympathized with a weak thief, because 
three constables had got hold of him ? {^Hear, /lear.] 
And yet the one thief in three policemen's hands is the 
weaker party; I suppose jou would sympathize with him! 
[Hear, hear, laughter, and applausel] Why, when that in- 
famous king of Naples, Bomba, was driven into Gaeta by 
Garibaldi with his immortal band of patriots, and Cavour 
sent against him the army of Northern Italy, who was the 
weaker party then? The tyrant and his minions; and the 
majority was with the noble Italian patriots, struggling 
for liberty. I never heard that Old England sent deputa- 
tions to King Bomba, and yet his troops resisted bravely 
there. [Lai/ghfer and interruption^ To-day the majority 
of the people of Rome are with Italy. Nothing but French 
bayonets keeps her from going back to the Kingdom of 
Italy, to which she belongs. Do you sympathize with the 
minority in Rome or the majority in Italy ? \A voice: 
" IVith Italy."^ To-day the South is the minority in 
America, and they are fighting for " independence ! " For 
what? [Uproar. A voice: ''Three cheers for independence," 
and hisses.'l I could wish so much bravery had had a 
better cause, and that so much self-denial had been less 
deluded; that that poisonous and venomous doctrine of 
State Sovereignty might have been kept aloof; that so 
many gallant spirits, such as Stonewall Jackson, might 



SPEECH IX LIVERPOOL. 533 

Still have lived. \Grcat applause and loud cheers, again and 
again renewed.^ The force of these facts, historical and in- 
controvertible, cannot be broken, except through diverting 
attention by an attack upon the North. It is said that the 
North is fighting for Union, and not for emancipation. 
The North is fighting for Union, for that insures emancipa- 
tion. \^Loud cheers, '■^Oh,oh,'" ^'■No,no," and cheers.'\ A great 
many men say to ministers of the Gospel: " You pretend 
to be preaching and working for the love of the people ? 
Why, you are all the time preaching for the sake of the 
church." What does the minister say ? " It is by means 
of the church that we help the people," and when men 
say that we are fighting for the Union, I too say we are 
fighting for the Union. [ZT^'^r, hear, and a voice: ^'That's 
right."'\ But the motive determines the value; and why 
are we fighting for the Union ? Because we never shall 
forget the testimony of our enemies. They have gone off 
declaring that the Union in the hands of the North was 
fatal to slavery. [Loud applause.] There is testimony in 
court for you! [A voice: ''''See that," and laughter?^ 

We are fighting for the Union, because we believe that 
preamble, which explains the very reason for which the 
Union was constituted. I will read it. " We " — not the 
States — " We, the People of the United States, in order to 
form a more perfect Union" \uproar] — I don't wonder you 
don't want to hear it \laughter\ — " in order to form a more 
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tran- 
quillity [uproar] — provide for the common Defense, pro- 
mote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of 
Liberty ["6>//, ^//"] — to ourselves and our posterity, do or- 
dain and establish this Constitution for the United States 
of America." \A voice: ^'' How many States?"] It is for the 
sake of that justice, that common welfare, and that liberty 
for which the National Union was established, that we fight 
for the Union. [Interruption?^ Because the South believed 
that the Union was against slavery, they left it. [Reneiued 
interruption^ Yes. [Applause, and '■'■ No, no."] To-day, how- 
ever, if the North believed that the Union was against lib- 
erty, they would leave it. ["(?//, oh," and great disturbance?] 



534 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Gentlemen, I have traveled in the West ten or twelve 
hours at a time in the mud knee-deep. It was hard, 
toiling my way, but I always got through my journey. I 
feel to-night as though I were traveling over a very muddy 
road; but I think I shall get through. [C/icers.] 

Well, next it is said, that the North treats the negro race 
worse than the South. [Aj>J>/ause, cries of "Bra7'of" and 
uproar^ Now, you see I don't fear any of these disagree- 
able arguments. I am going to face every one of them. 
In the first place I am ashamed to confess that such was 
the thoughtlessness — \inter7-itptwn\-~-^\xc\\ was the stupor 
of the North — \rene%vcd interruption^ — you will get a word 
at a time; to-morrow will let folks see what it is you don't 
want to hear — that for a period of twenty-five years she 
went to sleep, and permitted herself to be drugged and 
poisoned with the Southern prejudice against black men. 
\_Applause and uproar^ The evil was made worse, because, 
when any object whatever has caused anger between 
political parties, a political animosity arises against that 
object, no matter how innocent in itself; no matter what 
were the original influences which excited the quarrel. 
Thus the colored man has been the football between the 
two parties in the North, and has suffered accordingly. I 
confess it to my shame. But I am speaking now on my 
own ground, for I began twenty-five years ago, with a 
small party, to combat the unjust dislike of the colored 
man. \^Loud applause, dissension, and tproar. The interrup- 
tion at this point became so violent that the friends of Mr. 
Beecher throughout the hall rose to their feet, waving hats and 
handkerchiefs, and renewing their shouts of applause. The in- 
terruption lasted some minutes.^ Well, I have lived to see a 
total revolution in the Northern feeling — I stand here to 
bear solemn witness of that. It is not my opinion; it is 
my knowledge. \^Great uproar?^ Those men who under- 
took to stand up for the rights of all men — black as well 
as white — have increased in number; and now what party 
in the North represents those men that resist the evil 
prejudices of past years ? The Republicans are that 
party. [^Loud applause.^ And who are those men in the 



SPEECH nV LIVERPOOL. 535 

North that have oppressed the negro ? They are the Peace 
Democrats; and the prejudice for which in England you are 
attempting to punish me, is a prejudice raised by the men tvho 
have opposed me all my life. These pro-slavery Democrats 
abused the negro. I defended him, and they mobbed me 
for doing it. Oh, justice ! [^Loud laughter, applause, and 
hissesJ^ This is as if a man should commit an assault, 
maim and wound a neighbor, and a surgeon being called 
in should begin to dress his wounds, and by and by a 
policeman should come and collar the surgeon and haul 
him off to prison on account of the wounds which he was 
healing. 

Now, I told you I would not flinch from anything. I 
am going to read you some questions that were sent after 
me from Glasgow, purporting to be from a working man. 
[Great interruption.'\ If those pro-slavery interrupters think 
they will tire me out, they will do more than eight millions 
in America could. \_Applause and reneived interruption^ I 
was reading a question on your side, too. 

"Is k not a fact that in most of the Northern States laws exist 
precluding negroes from equal civil and political rights with the 
whites } That in the State of New York the negro has to be the 
possessor of at least two hundred and fifty dollars worth of prop- 
erty to entitle him to the privileges of a white citizen? That in 
some of the Northern States the colored man, whether bond or 
free, is by law excluded altogether, and not suffered to enter the 
State limits, under severe penalties ? and is not Mr. Lincoln's 
own State one of them ; and in view of the fact that the $20,000,- 
000 compensation which was promised to Missouri in aid of eman- 
cipation was defeated in the last Congress (the strongest Repub- 
lican Congress that ever assembled), what has the North done 
towards emancipation ? " 

Now, then, there's a dose for you. [A voice: '^Answer //."] 
And I will address myself to the answering of it. 

And first, the bill for emancipation in Missouri, to which 
this money was denied, was a bill which was drawn by 
what we call " log-rollers," who inserted in it an enormously 
disproportioned price for the slaves. The Republicans 
offered to give them $10,000,000 for the slaves in Missouri, 
and they outvoted it because they could not get $12,000,- 



536 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

000. Already half the slave-population had been "run" 
down South, and yet they came up to Congress to get 
$12,000,000 for what was not worth ten millions, nor even 
eight millions. 

Now as to those States that had passed " black " laws, 
as we call them, they are filled with Southern immigrants. 
The Southern part of Ohio, the Southern part of Indiana, 
where I myself lived for years, and which I knew like a 
book, the Southern part of Illinois, where Mr. Lincoln lives 
\s;reat nproa)-\ these parts are largely settled by immigrants 
from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and North 
Carolina, and it was their votes, or the Northern votes pan- 
dering for political reasons to theirs, that passed in those 
States the infamous "black" laws; and the Republicans 
in these States have a record, clean and white, as having 
opposed these laws in every instance as " infamous." 

Now as to the State of New York, it is asked whether a 
negro is not obliged to have a certain freehold property, 
or a certain amount of property, before he can vote. It is 
so still in North Carolina and Rhode Island for white* ioWiS 
— it is so in New York State. [J/r. Beechers voice slightly 
failed him here, and he was interrupted by a person who tried 
to i?nitate him; cries of '■'■Shame" and '■'■Turn him out."'\ I 
am not undertaking to say that these faults of the North, 
which were brought upon them by the bad example and 
influence of the South, are all cured; but I do say that they 
are in a process of cure which promises, if unimpeded by 
foreign influence, to make all such odious distinctions van- 
ish. 

" Is it not a fact that in most of the Northern States laws 
exist precluding negroes from equal civil and political 
rights with the whites ? " I will tell you. Let us compare 
the condition of the negro in the North and the South, 
and that will tell the story. By express law the South 
takes away from the slave all attributes of manhood, and 
calls him "chattel," which is another word for "cattle." 
{^Hear, hear, and hisses.^ No law in any Northern State 
calls him anything else but a person. ^Applause.'] The 
South denies the right of legal permanent marriage to the 



SPEECH AV LIVERPOOL. 537 

slave. There is not a State in the North where the mar- 
riage of the slave is not as sacred as that of any free white 
man. \^Immense cheering.^ Throughout the South, since 
the slave is not permitted to live in anything but in con- 
cubinage, his wife, so called, is taken from him at the will 
of his master, and there is neither public sentiment nor 
law that can hinder most dreadful and cruel separations 
every year in every county and town. There is not a State, 
county, or town, or school district in the North, where, if 
any man dare to violate the family of the poorest black 
man, there would not be an indignation that would over- 
whelm him. \^Loud applause. A voice: '•''How about the New 
York riots V'\ Pro-slavery Irishmen made that. \Laughter?^ 
In the South by statutory law it is a penitentiary offense to 
teach a black man to read and write. In the North not 
only are hundreds and thousands of dollars of State money 
expended in teaching colored people, but they have their 
own schools, their own academies, their own churches, their 
own ministers, their own lawyers. \Cheers and hisses^ In 
the South, black men are bred, exactly as cattle are bred 
in the North, for the market and for sale. Such dealing is 
considered horrible beyond expression in the North. In 
the South the slave can own nothing by law \interruptiou\ 
but in the single city of New York there are ten million 
dollars of money belonging to free colored people. \^Loud 
applause?^ In the South no colored man can determine 
\_uproar'\ — no colored man can determine in the South 
where he will work, nor at what he will work; but in the 
North — except in the great cities, where we are crowded 
by foreigners, — in any country-part, the black man may 
choose his trade and work at it, and is just as much pro- 
tected by the laws as any white man in the land. \Applausc.^^ 
I speak with authority on this point. \Cries of "7V^^."] 
When I was twelve years old, my father hired Charles 
Smith, a man as black as lampblack, to work on his farm. 
I slept in the same room with him. [" Oh, oh."] Ah, that 
don't suit you! [Uproar.] Now, you see, the South comes 
out. [Loud latighter.] I ate with him at the same table; I 
sang with him out of the same hymn-book ["Good."]; I 



53^ r A TRIO TIC ADDRESSES. 

cried, when he prayed over me at night; and if I had seri- 
ous impressions of religion early in life, they were due to 
the fidelity and example of that poor humble farm-laborer, 
black Charles Smith. \^Treinendous uproar a?id cheers?[ In 
the South, no matter what injury a colored man may re- 
ceive, he is not allowed to appear in court nor to testify 
against a white man. \^A voice: ^^ That's fact^^ In every 
single court of the North a respectable colored man is as 
good a witness as if his face were white as an angel's robe. 
\^Applaiise and laughter^ I ask any truthful and considerate 
man whether, in this contrast, it does not appear that, 
though faults may yet linger in the North uneradicated, 
the state of the negro in the North is not immeasurably 
better than anywhere in the South ? \Applause.\ And 
now, for the first time in the history of America \great 
interruption], — for the first time in the history of the United 
States a colored man has received a commission under the 
broad seal and signature of the President of the United 
States. \^Loud applause.] This day \^re?iewed interruption^ 
— this day, Frederick Douglass, of whom you all have heard 
here, is an officer of the United States [^loud applause], a 
commissioner sent down to organize colored regiments on 
Jefferson Davis's farm in Mississippi. [ Uproar and applause, 
and a voice, " You put them in the front of the battle too."] 

There is another fact that I wish to allude to — not for 
the sake of reproach or blame, but by way of claiming 
your more lenient consideration — and that is, that slavery 
was entailed upon us by your action. S^Hcar, hear.] 
Against the earnest protests of the colonists the then Gov- 
ernment of Great Britain — I will concede, not knowing 
what were the mischiefs — ignorantly, but in point of fact, 
forced slave traffic on the unwilling colonists. \Great 
uproar, in the midst of which one individual was lifted ip and 
carried out of the room amidst cheers and hisses?^ 

The Chairman : If you would only sit down no disturbance 
would take place. 

The disturbance having subsided, Mr. Beecher proceeded : — 
I was going to ask you, suppose a child is born with he- 
reditary disease; suppose this disease was entailed upon 



SPEECH IJV LIVERPOOL. 539 

him by parents who had contracted it by their own mis- 
conduct, would it be fair that those parents, that had 
brought into the world the diseased child, should rail at 
that child because it was diseased ? Y'-No, na."] Would 
not the child have a right to turn round and say, " Father, 
it was your fault that I had it, and you ought to be pleased 
to be patient with my deficiencies." \_Applause and hisses, 
and cries of ^^Ordery^ 

Great interruption and great disturbance here took place on 
the right of the platform ; and the chairman said that if the per- 
sons around the inifortunate individual who had caused the dis- 
turbance would allow him to speak alone, but not assist him in 
making the disturbance, it might soon be put an end to. The 
interruption was continued until another person was carried out 
of the hall. 

Mr. Beecher continued: — 

I do not ask that you should justify slavery in us now 
because it was wrong in you two hundred years ago; but 
having ignorantly been the means of fixing it upon us, now 
that we are struggling with mortal struggles to free our- 
selves from it, we have a right to your tolerance, your 
patience, and charitable construction. 

I am every day asked when this war will end. yinter- 
ruption?[ I wish Icould tell you; but remember, slavery is 
the cause of the war. [Hear, hear, applause, ""Yes," "iVt'."] 
Slavery has been working for more than one hundred 
years, and a chronic evil cannot be suddenly cured; and 
as war is the remedy, you must be patient to have the con- 
flict long enough to cure the inveterate hereditary sore. 
\^Hisses, loud applause, and a voice: " IVell stop //."] But of 
one thing I think I may give you assurance — this war 
won't end until the cancer of slavery is cut out by the 
roots. \^Loiid applause, hisses, and tremendous uproar. '\ I will 
read you a word from President Lincoln. [Renewed 
uproar^ It is a letter from Theodore Tilton. [Hisses and 
cheers.~\ Won't you hear what President Lincoln thinks ? 
["iV(?, no."'] Well, you can hear it or not. It will be 
printed whether you hear it or hear it not. [Hear, and 
cries of ^'■Read, read."^ Yes, I will read. "A talk with 



54° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

President Lincoln revealed to me a great growth of wis- 
dom. For instance, he said he was not going to press the 
colonization idea any longer, nor the gradual scheme of 
emancipation, expressing himself sorry that the Missouri- 
ans had postponed emancipation for seven years. He 
said, ' Tell your anti-slavery friends that I am coming out 
all right.' He is desirous that the Border States shall 
form free constitutions, recognizing the proclamation, and 
thinks this will be made feasible by calling on loyal men." 
YA voice: " What date is that letter 1" and interruption.^ 

Ladies and gentlemen, I have finished the exposition of 
this troubled subject. \^Renewcd and continued interruption^ 
No man can unveil the future; no man can tell what revo- 
lutions are about to break upon the world; no man can 
tell what destiny belongs to France, nor to any of the 
European powers; but one thing is certain, that in the 
exigencies of the future there will be combinations and re- 
combinations, and that those nations that are of the same 
faith, the same blood, and the same substantial interests, 
ought not to be alienated from each other, but ought to 
stand together. ^Immense cheering and hisses?[ I do not 
say that you ought not to be in the most friendly -alliance 
with France or with Germany; but I do say that your own 
children, the offspring of England, ought to be nearer to 
you than any people of strange tongue. \^A voice: ^^Degen- 
erate sons," applause and hisses; another voice: " What about 
the Trent 1 "] If there have been any feelings of bitterness 
in America, let me tell you they have been excited, rightly 
or wrongly, under the impression that Great Britain was 
going to intervene between us and our own lawful strug- 
gle. \^A voice: "No" and applause.l^ With the evidence 
that there is no such intention all bitter feelings will pass 
away. • \^.4pplause.~\ We do not agree with the recent doc- 
trine of neutrality as a question of law. But it is past, and 
we are not disposed to raise that question. We accept it 
now as a fact, and we say that the utterance of Lord Rus- 
sell at Blairgowrie [applause, hisses, and a voice: " IVhat 
about Lord Brougham 2 "] — together with the declaration 
of the government in stopping war-steamers here [great 



* SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. 541 

uproar, and applausc\-\^^^ gone far towards quieting 
every fear and removing every apprehension from our 
minds. lUproar and shouts of applause:] And now m 
the future it is the work of every good man and patriot 
not to create divisions, but to do the things that will make 
for peace. ["(9/^ oh;' and laughter.-] On our part it 
shall be done. {Applause and hisses, a?id "No, no."] On 
vour part it ought to be done; and when in any of the 
convulsions that come upon the world, Great Britain finds 
herself struggling single-handed against the gigantic 
powers that spread oppression and darkness {applatise, 
hisses, and uproar], there ought to be such cordiality that 
she can turn and say to her first-born and most illustrious 
child, " Come ! " [Hear, hear, applause, tremendous cheers, 
and uproar.] I will not say that England cannot again, as 
hitherto single-handed, manage any power [applause and 
,,proar]—hnt I will say that England and America together 
for religion and liberty [a voice: ''Soap, soap," uproar, and 
great applause-] — ar& a match for the world. [Applause; 
a voice: ''They don't zmnt ajiy more soft soap."] 

Now, gentlemen and ladies — [a voice: "Sam Slick;" and 
another voice: "Ladies and geiitlemen, if you please"]— ^\^^rv I 
came I was asked whether I would answer questions, and 
I very readily consented to do so, as I had in other places; 
but I will tell you it was because I expected to have the 
opportunity of speaking with some sort of ease and quiet. 
[A voice- "So you have."] I have for an hour and a half 
spoken against a storm [hear, hcar] — ^.x^^ you yourselves 
are witnesses that, by the interruption, I have been obliged 
to strive with my voice, so that I no longer have the power 
to control it in the face of this assembly. [Applause:] And 
although I am in spirit perfectly willing to answer any 
question, and more than glad of the chance, yet I am by this 
very unnecessary opposition to-night incapacitated physic- 
ally from doing it. [A voice: " Why did Lincoln delay the proc- 
lamation of slavery so long 2 "—another voice: "Habeas Corpus." 
A piece of paper was here handed tip to Mr. Beecher.] 

I am asked a question. I will answer this one. " At the 
auction of sittings in your church, can the negroes bid on 



542 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

equal terms with the whites?" [Cries of '■^No, z/^*."] Per- 
haps you know better than I do. [Hear, hear.^ But I 
declare that they can. [Hear, hear, and applause.^ I de- 
clare that, at no time for ten years past — without any rule 
passed by the trustees, and without even a request from 
me — no decent man or woman has ever found molestation 
or trouble in walking into my church and sitting where he 
or she pleased. [Applause.^ " Are any of the office-bearers 
in your church negroes?" No, not to my knowledge. 
Such has been the practical doctrine of amalgamation in 
the South that it is very difficult nowadays to tell who is 
a negro. [Hear, hear, and ''''No, no."^ Whenever a major- 
ity of my people want a negro to be an officer, he will be 
one; and I am free to say that there are a great many 
colored men that I know, who are abundantly capable of 
honoring any office of trust in the gift of our church. 
[App/ause.^ But while there are none in my church there 
is in Columbia county a little church where a negro man. 
being the ablest business man, and the wealthiest man in 
that town, is not only a ruler and elder of the church, but 
also contributes about two-thirds of all the expenses of it. 
[Hear, hear, and a voice: '''That is the exception, not the ru/e.''^ 
I am answering these questions, you see, out of gratuitous 
mercy: I am not bound to do so. 

It is asked whether Pennsylvania was not carried for Mr. 
Lincoln on account of his advocacy of the Morrill tariff, 
and whether the tariff was not one of the planks of the Chi- 
cago platform, on which Mr. Lincoln was elected. I had a 
great deal to do with that election; but I tell you that 
whatever local — 

Here the interruptions became so noisy, that it was found im- 
possible to proceed. The chairman asked how they could expect 
Mr. Beecher to answer questions amid such a disturbance. When 
order had been restored, the lecturer proceeded : — 

I am not afraid to leave the treatment I have received at 
this meeting to the impartial judgment of every fair-play- 
ing Englishman. When I am asked questions, gentlemanly 
courtesy requires that I should be permitted to answer 
them. [A voice from the further end of the room shouted 



SPEECH IN LIVERPOOL. 543 

something about the inhabitatits of Liverpool?^ I know that it 
was in the placards requested to give Mr. Beecher a recep- 
tion that should make him understand what the opinion 
of Liverpool was about him. ^^'■No.,no;" and ''''Yes., yesT^ 
There are two sides to every question, and Mr. Beecher's 
opinion about his treatment by Liverpool citizens is just 
as valid as your opinion about Mr. Beecher. Let me say, 
that if you wish me to answer questions you must be still; 
for, if I am interrupted, that is the end of the matter. 
\Hear, hear, a?id "^rai'o."^ 

I have this to say, that I have no doubt the Morrill tariff, 
or that which is now called so, did exercise a great deal of 
influence, not alone in Pennsylvania, but in many other 
parts of the country; because there are many sections of 
our country — those especially where the manufacture of 
iron or wool are the predominating industries — that are 
yet very much in favor of protective tariffs; but the think- 
ing men and the influential men of both parties are be- 
coming more and more in favor of free-trade. 

" Can a negro ride in a public vehicle in New York with 
a white man?" I reply that there are times when politi- 
cians stir up the passions of the lower classes of men and 
the foreigners, and there are times just on the eve of an 
election when the prejudice against the colored man is 
stirred up and excited, in which they will be disturbed in 
any part of the city; but taking the course of the year 
throughout, one year after another, there are but one or 
two of the city horse-railroads in which a respectable col- 
ored man will be molested in riding through the city. It 
is only on one railroad that this happened, and it is one 
which I have in the pulpit and the press always held up to 
severe reproof. At the Fulton Ferry there are two lines of 
omnibuses, one white and the other blue. I had been ac- 
customed to go in them indifferently; but one day I saw a 
little paper stuck upon one of them, saying, "Colored peo- 
ple not allowed to ride in this omnibus." I instantly got 
out. There are men who stand at the door of these two 
omnibus lines, urging passengers into one or the other. I 
am very well known to all of them, and the next day, when 



544 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

I came to the place, the agent asked, "Won't you ride, 
sir?" "No," I said, "I am too much of a negro to ride in 
that omnibus." \Laughter^^ I do not know whether this 
had any influence, but I do know, that after a fortnight's 
time I had occasion to look in, and the placard was gone. 
I called the attention of every one I met to that fact, and 
said to them, "Don't ride in that omnibus, which violates 
your principles, and my principles, and common decency 
at the same time." I say still further, that in all New 
England there is not a railway where a colored man can- 
not ride as freely as a white man. \^Hcar, /imr.] In the 
whole city of New York, a colored man taking a stage or 
railway will never be inconvenienced or suffer any dis- 
courtesy. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I bid you good evening. 

Mr. Beecher's resuming his seat was the signal for another out- 
burst of loud and prolonged cheers, hisses, groans, cat-calls, and 
every conceivable species of expression of approbation and 
disapprobation. Three cheers were proposed for the lecturer from 
the galleries, and enthusiastically given. 

The Rev. C. M. Birrell then came forward and said it would 
have been very unlike the fairness of Englishmen if that assembly 
had not given to a distinguished stranger [/i/sses] a fair and im- 
partial hearing; and it would have been as unlike a free American 
to demand of Englishmen that they should accept his opinions 
merely because they were his. But, since Mr. Beecher had given 
to them, under circumstances of great difficulty, and with mar- 
velous courtesy and patience \Jiear, hear], an elaborate, temperate, 
and most eloquent lecture, he called upon them to render him a 
cordial vote of thanks. {Hear, hear, and renewed hisses^ He 
expected that that vote would be joined in by all the representa- 
tives of the American slaveholders in that assembly, considering 
that they had had more instruction that night than they had 
apparently received during all the previous part of their lives. 
[" Oh, oh," cheers and laughter^ 

Mr. W. Crossfield, in seconding the resolution, said, as an in- 
habitant of Liverpool, he had been ashamed at the conduct of 
that meeting — an assembly of gentlemen, or those who professed 
to be gentlemen. For himself he most cordially thanked Mr. 
Beecher for the very interesting lecture they had had. 

The vote was carried with loud and prolonged cheering amid the 
waving of hats. 



SPEECH IN EXETER HALL, LONDON. 

October 20, 1863. 



Under the auspices of the Emancipation Society and the 
London Committee of Correspondence on American Affairs, a 
meeting was held in Exeter Hall to hear an address from Mr. 
Beecher. Exeter Hall, on the Strand, London, holds about 3000 
people. It was built in 1831, and has been the regular gathering- 
place of religious assemblies, the " May meetings " of reform 
societies, etc. 

Long before the hour of meeting the great hall was densely 
packed by as many human beings as could find sitting or stand- 
ing room in any part of the edifice, however inconvenient or per- 
ilous the position. They were both patient and good-humored 
while waiting for the appearance of Mr. Beecher, who found great 
difficulty in forcing a way through the enormous mass of people, 
which, in the Strand and Exeter street, literally beleaguered the 
place of meeting. On presenting himself to the audience, accom- 
panied by many of the leading supporters of the Emancipation 
movement, he was welcomed by long and reiterated plaudits; 
which were again and again repeated, the audience rising eii 
fnasse. The friends of Secession had endeavored to stir up some 
personal feeling against the lecturer by inflammatory placards, 
which covered every blank wall in the metropolis ; but the result 
only exhibited their own weakness and the total absence of pop- 
ular sympathy with their cause. 

The chair was taken shortly after seven o'clock, by Benjamin 
Scott, Esq., Chamberlain of London.* 



* Mr. James B. Pond, in his volume entitled "A Summer in England 
(1886) with Henry Ward Beecher " [New York: P'ords, Howard, & Hul- 
bert, 1S87], says : " It was in this same hall that Mr. Beecher had spoken 
last in England, at the close of his previous visit, during our American Civil 
War. At that time our Union was so greatly misunderstood that it was 
extremely difficult to find in all London a person willing to preside at the 
hall. Now all was changed. I believe scarcely a clergyman or minister in 
the city would have declined the honor. But Mr. lieecher said to me : 
' Pond, when I spoke here in 1863, and was having hard work to find some 
35 



546 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

The Chairman said: " Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to inform 
you the crowd outside the building is so dense that Mr. Beecher 
has not been able to force his way punctually. It has been with 
the greatest difficulty that I and some other members of the com- 
mittee have found our way here. You will, therefore, I am sure, 
make all allowance for Mr. Beecher if he should yet be a few min- 
utes behind time. [Cheers?^ . . . Our object to-night is to afford 
an opportunity to a distinguished stranger [c/iec^rs] — to address 
us on that absorbing topic — a gentleman who is entitled, what- 
ever opinions we may hold, to our profound respect. [Great 
cheering.] Whether we regard Henry Ward Beecher as the son 
of the celebrated Dr. Beecher [/icar~\ — or as the brother of Mrs. 
Beecher Stowe [c/ieers]— or a stranger visiting our shores — 
whether we regard him as a gentleman or a Christian minister, 
and as the uncompromising advocate of human rights [/oiid 
cheers] — he is entitled to our respectful and courteous attention. 
\Chcers.] I am quite sure that this assembly of Englishmen and 
English women will support me in securing for him a respectful 
hearing. ... I shall myself abstain advisedly from entering 
upon the subject of to-night's address. I wish merely to take 
this opportunity of saying how much I esteem the man person- 
ally, and because he has been the uncompromising advocate for 
twenty-five years, in times of peace and before the war, of the 
emancipation of the enslaved and oppressed. He was one of the 
few thinking men who were the noble pioneers of freedom on 
the American continent. He was so when it was neither fash- 
ionable nor profitable to be so. He took his stand, not on the 
shifting sands of expediency, but on the immovable rock of 
principle. [Cheers.] He had put his hand to the plough, and 
would never turn back. Some people had allowed their ears to 
be stuffed with cotton [laughter and cheers], some were blinded 
by gold dust, and some had allowed the gag of expediency to be 



one to preside, Mr. Benjamin Scott, Chamberlain of the city of London, 
volunteered his services. See if you can find him ; I want him to take the 
chair to-night.' I did find him, still Chamberlain of the city. He very 
modestly referred me to others who he said would gladly preside and would 
lend more honor to the occasion than he could ; but at length he kindly 
consented to serve for this second time. A large audience of ladies and 
gentlemen packed the great hall ; and when Mr. Scott appeared, the mem- 
ory of his earlier action still green, the burst of applause grew as it continued, 
the audience finally rising, waving handkerchiefs and cheering. Mr. Scott 
briefly referred to the meeting in the hall twenty-three years ago. He had 
never regretted occupying the position filled on that occasion, and now 
Mr. Beecher had asked him to be present again." 



* SPEECH IN LONDON. 547 

put in their mouths to quiet them. \Cheers?\ But Henry Ward 
Beecher stood before the world of America, and for some time 
stood almost alone, and called things by their right names. 
\Cheers.\ He had no mealy-mouthed expressions about 'pecul- 
iar institutions,' 'patriarchal institutions,' and 'paternal institu- 
tions,' \hear, hear, and laiighter\ — but he called slavery by the 
old English name of Slavery. [Loud cheers.^ And he charged 
to the account of that crime cruelty, lust, murder, rapine, piracy. 
\Loitd cheers^ He minced not his terms or his phrases. He 
looked right ahead to the course of duty which he had selected, 
and, regardless of the threats of man or the wrath of man, 
although the tar-pot was ready for him and the feathers were 
prepared — although the noose and the halter were ready and al- 
most about his neck — he went straight onward to the object; and 
now he has converted — as every man who stands alone for the 
truth and right will eventually convert^a large majority of those 
who were originally opposed to him. \Cheers.\ What the hum- 
ble draper's assistant, Granville Sharpe, did in this country, 
Henry Ward Beecher and two or three like-minded men have 
done on the continent of America. When he heard Christian 
ministers — God save the mark ! — standing in their pulpits with 
the Book of Truth before them, and stating that the institution 
of slavery was Christian, he did not mince the matter— he 
affirmed that it was bred in the bottomless pit. [Loud cheers. \ I 
honor and respect him for his manliness. He is every inch a 
man. He is a standard by which humanity may well measure 
itself. [Loud cheers?^ Would to God we had a hundred such 
men. [Cheers?^ I will now call upon Mr. Beecher [great cheer- 
ing'] — but allow me to say that we shall only prolong our meeting 
in this heated atmosphere by not affording the speakers a fair 
opportunity of addressing you." [Loud applause.'] 

Mr. Beecher advanced to the front of the platform amidst the 
most enthusiastic demonstrations of applause. The whole audi- 
ence stood up: hats and handkerchiefs were waved, and for some 
minutes the most exciting manifestations of hearty English good 
feeling were extended to the American advocate of freedom. As 
the uproarious greeting subsided, a few hisses rose up from the 
middle of the room, as if a body of serpents had somehow or other 
found their way into the assembly, and were adding their pro- 
longed tribute to the general display. Mr. Beecher then addressed 
the audience as follows, speaking distinctly and deliberately : — 

Ladies and gentlemen, the very kind introduction that 
I have received requires but a single word from me. I 



548 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

should be guilty if I could take all the credit which has 
been generously ascribed to me, for I am not old enough 
to have been a pioneer. And when I think of such names 
as Weld, Alvin Stewart, Gerritt Smith, Joshua Leavitt, 
William Goodell, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, William Lloyd 
Garrison \loiid applause] — and that most accomplished 
speaker of the world, Wendell Phillips \_renczved applause] 
— when I think of multitudes of that peculiar class of 
Christians called Friends — when I think of the number of 
men, obscure, without name or fame, who labored in the 
earliest days at the foundation of this reformation — and 
when I remember that I came in afterwards to build on 
their foundation — I cannot permit in this fair country the 
honors to be put upon me and wrested from those men 
that deserve them far more than I do. [^C/ieers.] All I can 
say is this, that when I began my public life I fell into the 
ranks under the appropriate captains, and fought as well 
as I knew how, in the ranks or in command. ^Loud cheers.^ 
As this is my last public address upon the American 
question in England, I may be permitted to glance briefly 
at my course here. \^Hear, hear.] At Manchester I at- 
tempted to give a history of the external political move- 
ment for fifty years past, so far as it was necessary to 
illustrate the fact that the present American war was only 
an overt and warlike form of a contest between liberty and 
slavery that had been going on politically for half a cent- 
ury. [^Hear, /lear.] At Glasgow I undertook to show the 
condition of work or labor necessitated by any profitable 
system of slavery, demonstrating that it brought labor into 
contempt, affixing to it the badge of degradation, and that 
a struggle to extend servile labor across the American con- 
tinent interests every free working man on the globe. 
^Cheers.] For my sincere belief is that the Southern cause 
is the natural enemy of free labor and the free laborer all 
the world over. \_Loud cheej-si] In Edinburgh I endeavored 
to sketch how, out of separate colonies and States intensely 
jealous of their individual sovereignty, there grew up and 
was finally established a Nation, and how in that nation 
of united states two distinct and antagonistic systems 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 549 

were developed and strove for the guidance of the national 
policy; which struggle at length passed, and the North 
gained the control. Thereupon the South abandoned the 
Union simply and solely because the Government was in 
future to be administered by men who would give their 
whole influence to freedom. \Loiid cheers^ In Liverpool 
I labored, under difficulties \laughter and cheers\—to show 
that slavery in the long run was as hostile to commerce 
and to manufactures all the world over, as it was to free 
interests in human society \chcers\ — that a slave nation 
must be a poor customer, buying the fewest and poorest 
goods, and the least profitable to the producers \_hcar, 
hear'] — that it was the interest of every manufacturing 
country to promote freedom, intelligence, and wealth 
amongst all nations [^cheers'] — that this attempt to cover 
the fairest portion of the earth with a slave-population 
that buys nothing, and a degraded white population that 
buys next to nothing, should array against it every true 
political economist and every thoughtful and far-seeing 
manufacturer, as tending to strike at the vital want 
of commerce — which is not cotton, but rich customers. 
[C/iecrs.] I have endeavored to enlist against this flagi- 
tious wickedness, and the great civil war which it has 
kindled, the judgment, conscience, and interests, of the 
British people. \^C7iccrs.] 

I am aware that a popular address before an excited 
audience more or less affected by party sympathies is not 
the most favorable method of doing justice to these mo- 
jnentous topics; and there have been some other circum- 
stances which made it yet more difficult to present a care- 
ful or evenly balanced statement; but I shall do the best I 
can to leave no vestige of doubt, that slavery was the 
cause — the only cause — the whole cause — of this gigantic 
and cruel war. [^Cheers.] I have tried to show that sym- 
pathy for the South, however covered by excuses or soft- 
ened by sophistry, is simply sympathy with an audacious 
attempt to build up a slave -empire pure and simple. 
^Hear, /leai-.'] I have tried to show that in this contest the 
North were contending for the preservation of their Gov- 



55° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ernment and their own territory, and those popular insti- 
tutions on which the Vv^ell-being of the nation depended. 
YHear, kear.'\ So far, I have spoken to the English from an 
English point of view. To-night I ask you to look to this 
struggle from an American point of view, and in its moral 
aspects. \^Hear, hear.^ That is, I wish you to take our 
stand-point for a little while [cheers] — and to look at our 
actions and motives, not from what the enemy says, but 
from what we say. [Cheers.] When two men have dis- 
agreed, you seldom promote peace between them by at- 
tempting to prove that either of them is all right or either 
of them is all wrong. [Hear, hear.] Now there has been 
some disagreement of feeling between America and Great 
Britain. I don't want to argue the question to-night which 
is right and which is wrong; but if some kind neighbor 
will persuade two people that are at disagreement to con- 
sider each other's position and circumstances, it may not 
lead either to adopting the other's judgment, but it may 
lead them to say of each other, " I think he is honest and 
means well, even if he be mistaken." [Loud cheers.] You 
may not thus get a settlement of the difficulty, but you will 
get a settlement of the quarrel. [Hear, hear.] I merely ask 
you to put yourselves in our track for one hour, and look 
\ at the objects as we look at them [cheers] — after that, form 
your judgment as you please. [Cheers.] 

The first and earliest mode in which the conflict took 
place between North and South was purely moral. It was 
a conflict simply of opinion and of truths by argument; and 
by appeal to the moral sense it was sought to persuade the 
slaveholder to adopt some plan of emancipation. [Hear, 
hear.] When this seemed to the Southern sensitiveness 
unjust and insulting, it led many in the North to silence, 
especially as the South seemed to apologize for slavery 
rather than to defend it against argument. It was said, 
"The evil is upon us; we cannot help it. We are sullied, 
but it is a misfortune rather than a fault. [Cheers.] It is 
not right for the North to meddle with that which is made 
worse by being meddled with, even by argument or ap- 
peal." That was the earlier portion of the conflict. A 



SPEECH IN LONDOX. 551 

great many men were deceived by it. I never myself 
yielded to the fallacy. As a minister of the gospel preach- 
ing to sinful men, I thought it my duty not to give in to 
this doctrine; their sins were on them, and I thought it 
my duty not to soothe them, but rather to expose them. 
\Cheers^ The next stage of the conflict was purely polit- 
ical. The South were attempting to extend their slave sys- 
tem into the Territories, and to prevent free States from 
covering the continent, by bringing into the Union a slave 
State for every free State. It was also the design and 
endeavor of the South not simply to hold and employ the 
enormous power and influence of the Central Executive, 
but also to engraft into the whole Federal Government a 
slave State policy. They meant to fill all offices at home 
and abroad with men loyal to slavery — to shut up the road 
to political preferment against men who had aspirations for 
freedom, and to corrupt the young and ambitious by oblig- 
ing them to swear fealty to slavery as the condition of suc- 
cess. I am saying what I know. I have seen the progressive 
corruption of men naturally noble, educated in the doctrine 
of liberty, who, being bribed by political offices, at last 
bowed the knee to Moloch. The South pursued a uniform 
system of bribing and corrupting ambitious men of North- 
ern consciences. A far more dangerous part of its policy 
was to change the Constitution, not overtly, not by external 
aggression — worse, to fill the courts with Southern judges 
\shame\ — until, first by laws of Congress passed through 
Southern influence, and secondly, by the construction and 
adjudication of the courts, the Constitution having become 
more and more tied up to Southern principles, the North 
would have to submit to slavery, or else to oppose it by 
violating the law and constitution as construed by servile 
judges. S^Hear, hear.\ They were, in short, little by little, 
injecting the laws, constitution, and policy of the country 
with the poison and blood of slavery. \Cheers?^ I will 
not let this stand on my own testimony. I am going to 
read the unconscious corroboration of this by Mr. Stephens, 
now the Vice-President of the present Confederacy — one, 
to his credit be it said, who at one time was a most sincere 
and earnest opponent of Secession. It is as follows: — 



552 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

" This step [of Secession] once taken, can never be recalled; and all the 
baleful and withering consequences that must follow will rest on the con- 
vention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our 
lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will 
inevitably invite and call forth ; when our green fields of waving harvests 
shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war 
sweeping over our land ; our temples of justice laid in ashes ; all the hor- 
rors and desolation of war upon us ; who but this convention will be held 
responsible for it ? and who but him who shall have given his vote for this 
unwise and ill-timed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be 
held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and 
probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the 
wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now pro- 
pose to perpetrate ? Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment 
what reasons you can give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer 
moments — what reasons you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calam- 
ity that it will bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of 
the earth to justify it.'' They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the 
case ; and what cause or one overt act can you name or point on which to 
rest the plea of justification .-' What right has the A^orth assailed? What 
interest of the South has been invaded.'' What justice has been denied? 
and what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld.'' Can 
either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and 
pur]3osely done by the Government of Washington, of which the South has 
a right to complain ? I challenge the answer. While, on the other hand, 
let me show the facts (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not here the advo- 
cate of the North ; but I am here the friend, the firm friend and lover of 
the South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly and 
faithfully, for yours, mine, and every other man's interest, the words of 
truth and soberness), of which I wish you to judge, and I will only state 
facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as records au- 
thentic in the history of our country. When we of the South demanded the 
slave-trade, or the importation of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, 
did they not yield the right for twenty years.? When we asked a three- 
fifths representation in Congress for our slaves was it not granted .'' When 
we asked and demanded the return of any fugitive from justice, or the re- 
covery of those persons owing labor or allegiance, was it not incorjjorated 
in the Constitution, and again ratified and strengthened in the Fugitive 
Slave Law of 1850 .' But do you reply that in many instances they have 
violated this compact and have not been faithful to their engagements.'' 
As individual and local communities they may have done so; but not by 
the sanction of Government ; for that has always been true to Southern 
interests. Again, gentlemen, look at another fact, W'hen we have asked 
that more territory should be added, that we might spread the institution 
of slavery, have they not yielded to our demands in giving us Louisiana, 
Florida, and Texas, out of which four States have been carved, and ample 
territory for four more may be added in due time if you by this unwise and 



SPEECH IN LOXDON. 553 

impolitic act, do not destroy this hope, and perhaps by it lose all, and 
have your last slave wrenched from you by stern military rule, as South 
America and Mexico were, or by the vindictive decree of a universal eman- 
cipation, which may reasonably be expected to follow. But, again, gentle- 
men, what have we to gain by this proposed change of our relation to the 
general Government? We have always had the control of it, and can yet, 
if we remain in it and are as united as we have been. We have had a 
majority of the Presidents chosen from the South ; as well as the control and 
management of most of those chosen from the North. We have had sixty 
years of Southern Presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the ex- 
ecutive department. So of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had 
eighteen from the South, and but eleven from the North ; although nearly 
four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the Free States, yet a 
majority of the court has always been from the South. This we have re- 
quired so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution un- 
favorable to us. In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard 
our interest in the legislative branch of Government. In choosing the pre- 
siding Presidents {pro tctn.) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their 
eleven. Speakers of the House we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. 
While the majority of the representatives, from their greater population, 
have always been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the 
Speaker, because he, to a greater extent, shapes and controls the legislation 
of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other department 
of the general Government. Attorney-Generals we have had fourteen, 
while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eighty- 
six and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which de- 
mands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the Free States, from 
their greater commercial interests, yet we have had the principal embassies, 
so as to secure the world's markets for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar on 
the best possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher offices 
of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors 
were drawn from the North. Equally so of clerks, auditors, and comp- 
trollers filling the executive department, the records show for the last fifty 
years that of the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than 
two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white popula- 
tion of the Republic. Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in 
which we have a great and vital interest; it is that of revenue, or means of 
supporting Government. From official documents we learn that a fraction 
over three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of the Govern- 
ment has uniformly been raised from the North. Pause now, while you 
can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and candidly these important 
items. Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dol- 
lars you must expend in a war with the North ; with tens of thousands of 
your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon 
the altar of your ambition — and for what ? we ask again. Is it for the 
overthrow of the American Government, established by our common 
ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and founded on 



554 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the broad principles of right, justice, and humanity? And, as such, I must 
declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by 
the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots in this and other lands, 
that it is the best and freest Goz'erninent — the most equal in its rights, the most 
jnst ill its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most inspiring in its 
principles to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon. 
Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a Government as this, under 
which we have lived for more than three-quarters of a century — in which 
we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety 
while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquillity ac- 
companied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed — is the height 
of i/iadncss, folly, and wickedness, to whicli I can neither lend my sanction 
nor my vote." 

Was there ever such an indictment unconsciously laid 
against any people ! [C//cers.] Here Mr. Stephens, talk- 
ing to people in Georgia, quite unconscious that his 
speech would be reported, that it would appear in the 
Northern press, and be read in Exeter Hall to an English 
audience — tells you what has been the plan and what have 
been the effects of Southern domination on the national 
policy, on the Government, and on the courts during the 
last fifty years. The object of Southern policy, early com- 
menced and steadily pursued, was to control the Govern- 
ment and to establish a slave-influence throughout North 
America. Now, take notice first, that the North, hating 
slavery, having rid itself of slavery at a great cost, and 
longing for its extinction throughout America, was unable 
until this war to touch slavery directly. The North could 
only contend against slave -f>o/icy — not directly against 
slavery. Why ? Because slavery was not the creature of 
national law, and therefore not subject to national jurisdic- 
tion, but of State law, and subject only to State jurisdic- 
tion. A direct act on the part of the North to abolish 
slavery would have been revolutionary. [A voice : " We 
do not understand you. ''^ You will understand me before I 
have done with you to-night. \Checrs?[ Such an attack 
would have been a violation of a fundamental principle of 
State independence. This peculiar structure of our Gov- 
ernment is not so unintelligible to Englishmen as you may 
think. It is only taking an English idea on a larger scale. 
We have borrowed it from you. A great many do not un- 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 555 

derstand how it is that there should be State independence 
under a national Government. Now I am not closely ac- 
quainted with your affairs, but the Chamberlain can tell 
you if I am wrong, when I say, that there belong to the old 
city of London certain private rights that Parliament can- 
not meddle with. Yet there are elements in which Parlia- 
ment — that is, the will of the nation — is as supreme over 
London as over any town or city of the realm. Now, if 
there are some things which London has kept for her own 
judgment and will, and yet others which she has given up 
to the national will, you have herein the principle of the 
American Government [tV/^'^rx] by which certain local 
matters belong exclusively to the local jurisdiction, and 
certain general matters to the national Government. I will 
give you another illustration that will bring it home to 
you. There is not a street in London, but, as soon as a 
man is inside his house, he may say, his house is his castle. 
There is no law in the realm which can lay down to that 
man how many members shall compose his family — how 
he shall dress his children — when they shall get up and 
when they shall go to bed — how many meals he shall have 
a day, and of what those meals shall be constituted. The 
interior economy of the house belongs to the members of 
the house, yet there are many respects in which every 
householder is held in check by common rights. They 
have their own interior and domestic economy, yet they 
share in other things which are national and governmental. 
It may be very wrong to give children opium, but all the doc- 
tors in London cannot say to a man that he shall not drug 
his child. It is his own business, and if it is wrong it can- 
not be interfered with. I will give you another illustration. 
Five men form a partnership of business. Now, that part- 
nership represents the national Government of the United 
States; but it has relation only to certain great commercial 
interests common to them all. Yet each of these five men 
has another sphere — his family — and in that sphere the 
man may be a*drunkard, a gambler, a lecherous and in- 
decent man, but the firm cannot meddle with his morals. 
It cannot touch anything but business interests that belong 



556 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to the firm. Now, our States came together on this doc- 
trine — that each State, in respect to those rights and insti- 
tutions that were local and peculiar to it, was to have un- 
divided sovereignty over its own affairs; but that all those 
powers, such as taxes, wars, treaties of peace, which belong 
to one State, and which are common to all States, went into 
the general Government. The general Government never 
had the power — the power was never delegated to it — to 
meddle with the interior and domestic economy of the 
States, and it never could be done. 

You understand, then, that it was only that part of 
slavery which escaped from the State jurisdiction, and 
which entered into the national sphere, which formed the 
subject of ante-bellum controversy. We could not justly 
touch the Constitution of the States, but only the policy 
of the national Government, that came out beyond the 
State and appeared in Congress and in the Territories. 
\Chtcrs?j^ We are bound to abide by our fundamental law. 
Honor, fidelity, integrity, as well as patriotism, required us 
to abide by that law. The great conflict between the South 
and North, until this war began, was, which should control 
the Federal or central Government, and what we call the 
Territories; that is, lands which are the property of the whole 
Union, and have not yet received separate State rights. 
[C/ieers.] That was the conflict. It was not " Emancipation" 
or "No Emancipation;" Government had no business with 
that question. Before the war, the only thing on which 
politically the free people of the North and South took 
their respective sides was, " Shall the National policy be 
free or slave ? " And I call you to witness that forbear- 
ance, though not a showy virtue — fidelity, though not a 
shining quality — are fundamental to manly integrity. 
{Cheers?^ During a period of eighty years, the North, 
whose wrongs I have just read out to you, not from her 
own lips, but from the lips of her enemy, has stood faith- 
fully to her word. With scrupulous honor she has re- 
spected legal rights, even when they were #ierely civil and 
not moral rights. The fidelity of the North to the great 
doctrine of State rights, which was born of her — her for- 



SPEECH IN LOXDON. 557 

bearance under wrong, insult; and provocation — her con- 
scientious and honorable refusal to meddle with the evil 
which she hated, and which she saw to be aiming at the 
life of Government, and at her own life— her determina- 
tion to hold fast pact and constitution, and to gain her 
victories by giving the people a new National policy — will 
yet be deemed worthy of something better than a con- 
temptuous sneer, or the allegation of an "enormous na- 
tional vanity." \Chccrs?[ The Northern forbearance is 
one of those themes of which we may be justly proud 
["(9/^," and cheers] — a product of virtue, a fruit of liberty, 
an inspiration of that Christian faith, which is the mother 
at once of truth and of liberty. [^C/ieers.] I am proud to 
think that there is such a record of national fidelity as 
that which the North has written for herself by the pen of 
her worst enemies. Now that is the reason why the North 
did not at first go to war to enforce emancipation. She 
went to war to save the National institutions; [r/^i^vv-^'] 
— to save the Territories; to sustain those laws, which 
would first circumscribe, then suffocate, and finally destroy 
slavery. [^Cheers.] That is the reason why that most 
true, honest, just, and conscientious magistrate, Mr. Lin- 
coln — 

The announcement of Mr. Lincoln's name was received with 
loud and continued cheering. The whole audience rose and 
cheered for some time, and it was a few minutes before Mr, 
Beecher could proceed. 

From having spoken much at tumultuous assemblies I 
had at times a fear that when I came here this evening my 
voice would fail from too much speaking. But that fear 
is now changed to one that your voices will fail from too 
much cheering. \^Lai/g/iter.] 

How then did the North pass from a conflict with the 
South concerning a general slave policy, to a direct attack 
upon the institutions of slavery itself ? Because, according 
to the foreshadowing of that wisest man of the South, Mr. 
Stephens, they beleaguered the national Government and 
the national life with the institution of slavery — -obliged a 
sworn President, who was put under oath not to invade 



558 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

that institution, to take his choice between the safety and 
life of the Government itself, or the slavery by which it 
was beleaguered. [CV/twi'.] If any man lays an obstruc- 
tion on the street, and blocks up the street, it is not the 
fault of the people if they walk over it. As the funda- 
mental right of individual self-defense cannot be with- 
drawn without immorality — so the first element of national 
life is to defend life. ' As no man attacked on the highway 
violates law, but obeys the law of self-defense — a law in- 
side of the laws — by knocking down his assailant; so, 
when a nation is assaulted, it is a right arfd duty, in the 
exercise of self-defense, to destroy the enemy, by which 
otherwise it will be destroyed. \Hear^ As long as the 
South allowed it to be a moral and political conflict of 
policy, we were content to meet the issue as one of policy. 
But when they threw down the gauntlet of war, and said 
that by it slavery was to be adjudicated, we could do noth- 
ing else than take up the challenge. \^Loud cJieers?[ The 
police have no right to enter your house as long as you 
keep within the law, but when you defy the laws and en- 
danger the peace and safety of the neighborhood they 
have a right to enter. So in our constitutional Govern- 
ment; it has no power to touch slavery while slavery re- 
mains a State institution. But when it lifts itself up out 
of its State humility and becomes banded to attack the 
Nation, it becomes a national enemy, and has no longer 
exemption. [C/z^vri-.] 

But it is said," The President issued his proclamation after 
all for political effect, not for humanity." \Cries of hear, 
/icar.'] Of course the right of issuing a proclamation. of 
emancipation was political, but the disposition to do it was 
personal. [Lo/ui c/ieers.] Mr. Lincoln is an officer of the 
State, and in the Presidential chair has no more right than 
your judge on the bench to follow his private feelings. [Aj>- 
plause?[ He is bound to ask, "What is the law ?" not "What 
is my sympathy ? " \^Hcar, hear7[ And when a judge sees 
that a rigid execution or interpretation of the law goes along 
with primitive justice, with humanity, and with pity, he is 
all the more glad because his private feelings go with his 



♦ SPEECH IN LONDON. 559 

public office. \Chcers?f^ Perhaps in the next house to a 
kind and benevolent surgeon is a boy who fills the night 
with groans, because he has a cancerous and diseased leg. 
The surgeon would fain go in and amputate that limb and 
save that life; but he is not called in, and therefore he has 
no business to go in, though he ever so much wish it. 
\Hear, hear.^ But at last the father says to him, " In the 
name of God, come in and save my child;" and he goes 
in professionally and cuts off the leg and saves the life, to 
the infinite disgust of a neighbor over the way, who says, 
" Oh, he would not go in from neighborly feeling and cut 
the leg off." \_Loiid applaiisei\ I should like to know how 
any man has a right to cut your leg or mine off except 
professionally \laiighter and cheers\ — and so a man must 
often wait for official leave to perform the noblest offices 
of justice and humanity. Here then is the great stone of 
stumbling. At first the President could not touch slavery, 
because in time of peace it was a legal institution. How 
then can he do it now ? Because in time of war it has 
stepped beyond its former sphere, and is no longer a local 
institution, but a national and public enemy. \_Applause.\ 
Now I promised to make that clear: have I done it? 
[^Hear, hear, and applause.^ 

It is said, " Why not let the South go ? " [^Hear, hear, 
and cheers?^ "Since they won't be at peace with you, why 
do you not let them separate from you ? " Because they 
would be still less peaceable tvhen separated. \^Hear, hear.^ 
Oh, if the Southerners only would go ! \^La lighter.'] They 
are determined to stay — that is the trouble. [^Hear, hear.] 
We would furnish free passage to all of them if they would 
go. But we say. The land is ours. [^Cheers.] Let them 
go, and leave to the nation its land, and they will have our 
unanimous consent. [^Renewed cheers.] 

But I wish to discuss this more carefully. It is the very 
marrow of the matter. I ask 3^ou to stand in our place for 
a little time, and seeing this question as we see it, afterwards 
make up your judgment. [^Hear, hear.] 

And first, this war began by the act of the South — firing 
at the old flag that had covered both sections with glory 



560 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and protection. \^Applausei\ The attack made upon us 
was under circumstances which inflicted imrnediate severe 
humiliation and threatened us with final subjugation. 
The Southerners held all the keys of the country. They 
had robbed our arsenals. They had made our treasury 
bankrupt. They had possession of the most important 
offices in the army and navy. They had the vantage of 
having long anticipated and prepared for the conflict. 
\Hear, heari\ We knew not whom to trust. One man 
failed, and another man failed. Men, pensioned by the 
Government, lived on the salary of the Government only 
to have better opportunities to stab and betray it. There 
was not merely one Judas, there were a thousand in our 
country. [Zr<'<7r, hear.^ and hisses^ And for the North 
to have lain down like a spaniel — to have given up the 
land that every child in America is taught, as every child 
in Britain is taught, to regard as his sacred right and his 
trust — to have given up the mouths of our own rivers and 
our mountain citadel without a blow, would have marked 
the North in all future history as craven and mean. \^Loiid 
cheers and some /lisscs.^^ 

Second, the honor and safety of that grand experiment, 
self-government by free institutions, demanded that so 
flagitious a violation of the first principles of legality 
should not carry off impunity and reward, thereafter 
enabling the minority in every party conflict to turn and 
say to the majority, " If you don't give us our way we 
will make war." Oh, Englishmen, would you let a minor- 
ity dictate in such a way to you ? S^Loiid cries of '•''No, 
no, never! " and cheers^^ Three thousand miles off don't 
make any dift'erence, then ? \^''No, no."] The principle 
thus introduced would literally have no end — would carry 
the nation back to its original elements of isolated States. 
Nor is there any reason why it should stop with States. 
If every treaty may be overthrown by which States have 
been settled into a Nation, what form of political union 
may not on like grounds be severed ? There is the same 
force in the doctrine of Secession in the application to 
counties as in the application to States; and if it be right 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 561 

for a State or a county to secede, it is equally right for a 
town and a city. \Cheersi\ This doctrine of Secession is 
a huge revolving millstone that grinds the national life to 
powder. \Cheers^ It is anarchy in velvet, and national 
destruction clothed in soft phrases and periphrastic ex- 
pressions. [C/icers.] But we have fought with that devil 
" Slavery," and understand him better than you do. [Loud 
c/ieers.l No people with patriotism and honor will give 
up territory without a struggle for it. [C/ieers.l Would 
you give it up ? [Loud cries of "iV^c?."] It is said that the 
States are owners of their territory ! It is theirs to use, 
not theirs to run away with. We have equal right with 
them to enter it. Let me inform you that when those 
States first sat in convention to form a Union, a resolution 
was introduced by the delegates from South Carolina and 
Virginia, " That we now proceed to form a National Gov- 
ernment." The delegate from Connecticut objected. The 
New Englanders were State-right Wien, and the South, in 
the first instance, seemed altogether for a National Gov- 
ernment. Connecticut objected, and a debate took place 
whether it should be a Constitution for a mere Confeder- 
acy of States, or for a nation formed out of those States. 
[A voice: "JV/ien was thatV'\ It was in the Constitutional 
Convention of 17S7. 

He wants to help me. [Laughter^ I like such interrup- 
tions. I am here a friend amongst friends. [Cheersi\ 
Nothing will please me better than any question asked in 
courtesy and in earnest to elucidate this subject. I am not 
afraid of being interrupted by questions which are to the 
point. [Cheers^ 

At this convention the resolution of the New England 
delegates that they should form a Confederacy instead of 
a Nation was voted down; and never came up again. 
[Cheers^^ The first draft of the preamble contained these 
words: "We, the people of the United States, for the pur- 
pose of forming a Nation; " but as there was a good deal 
of feeling between the North and South on the subject, 
when the draft came to the committee for revision, and 

they had simply to put in the proper phraseology, they put 

36 



562 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

it " for the purpose of forming a Union." When, later, the 
question whether the States were to hold their autocracy 
came up in South Carolina — it was called the Carolina 
heresy — that too was put down; and never lifted its head 
up again until this Secession, when it was galvanized to jus- 
tify that which has no other pretense to justice. \Chee)■s^^ 
I would like to ask those English gentlemen who hold that 
it is right for a State to secede when it pleases, how they 
would like it, if the county of Kent should try the experi- 
ment. l^Hear, hcar^ The men who cry out for Secession 
of the Southern States in America would say, "Kent se- 
ceding? Ah, circumstances alter cases!" \Chcers and 
laughter?^ The Mississippi, which is our Southern door 
and hall to come in and to go out, runs right through the 
territory which they tried to rend from us. The South 
magnanimously offered to let us use it; but what would 
you say if, on going home, you found a squad of gypsies 
seated in your hall, who refused to be ejected, saying, 
" But look here, we will let you go in and out on equitable 
and easy terms." \Cheers and laughter^ 

But there was another question involved — the question 
of national honor. If you take up and look at the map 
that delineates the mountainous features of that continent, 
you will find the peculiar structure of the Alleghany ridge, 
beginning in New Hampshire, running across the New 
England States through Pennsylvania and West Virginia, 
stopping in the Northern part of Georgia. S^Hear, hear^ 
Now, all the world over, men that live in mountainous 
regions have been men for liberty \chcers\ — and from the 
first hour to this hour the majority of the population of 
Western Virginia, which is in this mountainous region, the 
majorit)?- of the population of Eastern Tennessee, of West- 
ern Carolina, and of North Georgia, have been true to the 
Union, and were urgent not to go out. They called to the 
National Government, "We claim that, in fulfillment of 
the compact of the Constitution, you defend our rights, 
and retain us in the Union." \Chee7's^ We would not 
suffer a line of fire to be established one thousand five 
hundred miles along our Southern border from which, in 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 563 

a coming hour, there might shoot out wars and disturb- 
ances, with such a people as the slaveholding South, that 
never kept faith in the Union, and would never keep faith 
out of it. They have disturbed the land as old Ahab of 
accursed memory did \cheers and hisses\ and when Elijah 
found this Ahab in the way, Ahab said, " It is Elijah that 
has disturbed Israel." \^A lai/g/i.^^ Now we know the nature 
of this people. We know that if we entered into a truce 
with them they would renew their plots and violences, and 
take possession of the continent in the name of the devil 
AND SLAVERY. \^C/ieers.'\ 

One more reason why we will not let this people go is 
because we do not want to become a military people. A 
great many say America is becoming too strong; she is 
dangerous to the peace of the world. But if you permit 
or favor this division, the South becomes a military nation, 
and the North is compelled to become a military nation. 
Along a line of 1,500 miles she must have forts and men to 
garrison them. These 250,000 soldiers will constitute the 
national standing army of the North. Now any nation 
that has a large standing army is in great danger of losing 
its liberties. ["iW, no."'\ Before this war the legal size of 
the national army was 25,000; that was all. The actual 
number was 18,000, and those were all the soldiers we 
wanted. The New York Tribune and other papers repeat- 
edly said that even these were useless in our nation. But 
if the country were divided, then we should have two great 
military nations taking its place, and instead of a paltry 
18,000 soldiers, there would be 250,000 on one side and 
100,000 or 200,000 on the other. And if America, by this 
ill-advised disruption, is forced to have a standing army, 
like a boy with a knife, she will always want to whittle 
with it. \^Laughter and cheers?^ It is the interest, then, of 
the world, that the nation should be united, and that it 
should be under the control of that part of America that 
has always been for peace \cheers^ and cries of ''''No., no "], 
that it should be wrested from the control and policy of that 
part of the nation that has always been for more territory, 
for filibustering, for insulting foreign nations. \Cheers.'\ 



564 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

But that is not all. The religious-minded among our 
people feel that in the territory com.mitted to us there is a 
high and solemn trust — a national trust. We are taught 
that in some sense the world itself is a field, and every 
Christian nation acknowledges a certain responsibility for 
the moral condition of the globe. But how much nearer 
does it come when it is one's own country ! And the 
Church of America is coming to feel more and more that 
God gave us this country, not merely for material ag- 
grandizement, but for a glorious triumph of the Church 
of Christ. \Checrsi\ Therefore we undertook to rid the 
territory of slavery. Since slavery has divested itself of 
its municipal protection, and has become a declared public 
enemy, it is our duty to strike down the slavery which 
would blight this fair western land. When I stand and 
look out upon that immense territory as a man, as a citi- 
zen, as a Christian minister, I feel myself asked, " Will you 
permit that vast country to be overclouded by this curse ? 
Will you permit the cries of bondmen to issue from that 
fair territory, and do nothing for their liberty ? " What 
are we doing ? Sending our ships round the globe, carry- 
ing missionaries to the Sandwich Islands, to the islands of 
the Pacific, to Asia, to all Africa. And yet, when this 
work of redeeming our continent from the heathendom of 
slavery lies before us, there are men who counsel us to 
give it up to the devil, and not try to do anything with it. 
Ah ! independent of pounds and pence, independent of 
national honor, independent of all merely material consid- 
erations, there is pressing on every conscientious Northern- 
er's mind this highest of all considerations — our duty to 
God to save that country from the blast and blight of 
slavery. \Cheers^ Yet how many are there who up, down, 
and over all England are saying, "Let slavery go — let 
slavery go " ? It is recorded, I think, in the biography of 
one of the most noble of your own countrymen, Sir. T. 
Fowell Buxton \cheers\ that on one occasion a huge 
favorite dog was seized with hydrophobia. With wonder- 
ful courage he seized the creature by the neck and collar, 
and against the animal's mightiest efforts, dashing hither 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 565 

and thither against wall and fence, held him until help 
could be got. If there had been Englishmen there of the 
stripe of the Times, they would have said to Fowell Buxton, 
"Let him go;" but is there one here who does not feel 
the moral nobleness of that man, who rather than let the 
mad animal go down the street biting children and women 
and men, risked his life and prevented the dog from doing 
evil ? Shall we allow that hell hound of slavery, mad, 
mad as it is, to go biting millions in the future? \Cheers.\ 
We will peril life and limb and all we have first. These 
truths are not exaggerated — they are diminished rather 
than magnified in my statement; and you cannot tell how 
powerfully they are influencing us unless you were stand- 
ing in our midst in America; you cannot understand how 
firm that national feeling is which God has bred in the 
North on this subject. It is deeper than the sea; it is 
firmer than the hills; it is serene as the sky over our head, 
where God dwells. \Chcers?^ 

But it is said, "What a ruthless business this war of ex- 
termination is ! I have heard it stated that a fellow from 
America, purporting to be a minister of the gospel of 
peace, had come over to England, and that that fellow had 
said he was in favor of a war of extermination." Well, 
if he said so he will stick to it; \checrs\ — but not in the 
way in which enemies put these words. Listen to the 
way in which I put them, for if I am to bear the respon- 
sibility it is only fair that I should state them in my own 
way. We believe that the war is a test of our institu- 
tions; that it is a life-and-death struggle between the two 
principles of liberty and slavery — \chcers\—XhsX it is the 
cause of the common people all the world over. ^Re- 
nnued c/iecis.'] We believe that every struggling nation- 
ality on the globe will be stronger if we conquer this odious 
oligarchy of slavery, and that every oppressed people in 
the world will be weaker if we fail. \^C/ieers.^^ The sober 
American regards the war as part of that awful yet glori- 
ous struggle which has been going on for hundreds of 
years in every nation between right and wrong, between 
virtue and vice, between liberty and despotism, between 



566 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

freedom and bondage. It carries with it the whole future 
condition of our vast continent — its laws, its policy, its 
fate. And standing in view of these tremendous realities 
we have consecrated all that we have — our children, our 
wealth, our national strength — we lay them all on the 
altar and say, " It is better that they should all perish than 
that the North should falter and betray this trust of God, 
this hope of the oppressed, this Western civilization." 
\Cheers^ If we say this of ourselves, shall we say less of 
the slaveholders ? If we are willing to do these things, 
shall we say, " Stop the war for their sakes " ? If we say 
this of ourselves, shall we have more pity for the rebell- 
ious, for slavery seeking to blacken a continent with its 
awful evil, desecrating the social phrase, '' National Inde- 
pendence " by seeking only an independence that shall 
enable them to treat four millions of human beings as 
chattels 1 [C//c'tvx] Shall we be tenderer over them than 
over ourselves ? Standing by my cradle, standing by my 
hearth, standing by the altar of the church, standing by all 
the places that mark the name and memory of heroic men 
who poured out their blood and lives for principle, I de- 
clare that in ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice 
everything we have for principle. [C/iecrs.] If the love 
of popular liberty is dead in Great Britain you will not 
understand us; but if the love of liberty lives as it once 
lived, and has worthy successors of those renowned men 
that were our ancestors as much as yours, and whose ex- 
ample and principles we inherit as so much seed corn in 
a new and fertile land, then you will understand our firm, 
invincible determination — to y?t,''/// t/i/s war through, at all 
hazards and at every cost. ^Immense cheering, accompanied 
with a few hisses.^ 

I am obliged for this little diversion; it rests me. 

Against this statement of facts and principles no public 
man and no party could stand up for one moment in 
England if it were permitted to rest upon its own merits. 
It is therefore sought to darken the light of these truths 
and to falsify facts. I will not mention names, but I will 
say this, that there have been important organs in Great 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 567 

Britain that have deliberately and knowingly spoken 
what is not the truth. \^Applaiise, and loud cries of '■''The 
Times!" ''^ Three groans for the Times ! "^ It is declared 
that the North has no sincerit5^ It is declared that the 
North treats the blacks worse than the South does. \Hear, 
hear.^ A monstrous lie from beginning to end ! It is de- 
clared that emancipation is a mere political trick — not a 
moral sentiment. It is declared that this is the cruel 
unphilanthropic squabble of men gone mad with national 
vanity. [^Cheers and hisses.^ Oh, what a pity that a man 
should "fall nine times the space that measures day and 
night " to make an apostasy which dishonors his closing 
days, and to wipe out the testimony for liberty that he 
gave in his youth ! But even if all this monstrous lie 
about the North — this needless slander — were true, still it 
would not alter the fact that Northern success will carry 
liberty — Southern success, slavery. [^Cheers.] For when 
society dashes against society, the results are not what 
the individual motives of the members of society would 
make them — the results are what the institutions of society 
make them. When your army stood at Waterloo, they 
did not know what were the vast moral consequences that 
depended on that battle. It was not what the individual 
soldiers meant or thought, but what the British empire — 
the national life behind, and the genius of that renowned 
kingdom which sent that army to victory — meant and 
thought. \^Hear, hear~\. And even if the President were 
false — if every Northern man were a juggling hypocrite — 
that does not change the Constitution; and it does not 
change the fact that if the North prevails, she carries 
Northern ideas and Northern institutions with her. 
\_Checrs.^ 

But I hear a loud protest against war. \^Hear, hear.'] 
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, — there is a small 
band in our country and in yours — I wish their number 
were quadrupled — who have borne a solemn and painful 
testimony against all wars, under all circumstances; and 
although I differ with them on the subject of defensive 
warfare, yet when men that rebuked their own land, and 



568 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

all lands, now rebuke us, though I cannot accept their 
judgment, I bow with profound respect to their consist- 
ency. [^Hear, hear, and cheers.'] But excepting them, I 
regard this British horror of the American war as some- 
thing wonderful. [^Reneiucd cheers and laughter.'] Why, it 
is a phenomenon in itself ! On what shore has not the 
prow of your ships dashed ? \Hear, hear.] What land is 
there with a name and a people, where your banner has 
not led your soldiers? \^Hear, hear.] And when the great 
resurrection reveille shall sound, it will muster British 
soldiers from every clime and people under the whole 
heaven. [^Cheers.] Ah! but it is said. This is a war against 
your own blood. \^Hear, hear.] How long is it since you 
poured soldiers into Canada, and let all your yards work 
night and day to avenge the taking of two men out of the 
Trent ? \^Loiid applause^ Old England shocked at a war of 
principle ! She gained her glories in such wars. \Cheers^ 
Old England ashamed of a war of principle ! Her national 
ensign symbolizes her history — the cross in a field of blood. 
\Cheers?}^ And will you tell us — who inherit your blood, 
your ideas, and your high spirits [cheers], that we must not 
fight? [Cheers.] The child must heed the parents, until 
the parents get old and tell the child not to do the thing 
that in early life they whipped him for not doing. And 
then the child says, " Father and Mother are getting too 
old; they had better be taken away from their present 
home and come to live with us." [Cheers and hisses.] Per- 
haps you think that the old island will do a little longer. 
[Jft'sses.] Perhaps you think there is coal enough. Per- 
haps you think the stock is not quite run out yet; but 
whenever England comes to that state that she does not 
go to war for principle, she had better emigrate and we 
will give her room. [Laughter.] 

I have been very much perplexed what to think about 
the attitude of Great Britain in respect to the South. I 
must, I suppose, look to the opinion of the majority of the 
English people. I don't believe in the Z/'wifi-. [Groans /or 
the '''' Times;" groans for the '''' Telegraph."'] You cut my poor 
sentence in two, and all the blood runs out of it. [Laugh- 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 569 

ter^ I was just going to say that like most of you I don't 
believe in the Times, but I always read it. \Laughter^^ 
Every Englishman tells me that the Times is no exponent 
of English opinion, and yet I have taken notice that when 
they talk of men, somehow or other their last argument is 
the last thing that was in the Times. \_Laug/iter.^ I think 
it was the Times or Fast that said, that America was sore, 
because she had not the moral sympathy of Great Britain, 
and that the moral sympathy of Great Britain had gone 
for the South. ["iW, no."^ Well, let me tell you, that 
those who are represented in the newspapers as favorable 
to the South are like men who have arrows and bows strong 
enough to send the shafts 3,000 miles; and those who feel 
sympathy for the North are like men who have shafts, but 
have no bows that could shoot them far enough. [^Hea}-.^ 
The English sentiment that has made itself felt on our 
shores is the part that slandered the North and took part 
with the South; and if you think we are unduly sensitive, 
you must take into account that the part of English senti- 
ment carried over is the part that gives its aid to slavery 
and against liberty. [^Ilear, /lear.] I shall have a different 
story to tell when I get back. 

The assembly rose, and for a few moments hats and handker- 
chiefs were waved enthusiastically amidst loud cheering. [A 
voice: "What about the Riissiiuis?" Hear, hear.'] 

A gentleman asks me to say a word about the Russians 
in New York harbor. As this is a little private confidential 
meeting \^[ai/ghter'\, I will tell you the fact about them. 
\^Laug/tter.^ The fact is this — it is a little piece of coquetry. 
\^Lai/ghter.^ Don't you know that when a woman thinks 
her suitor is not quite attentive enough, she takes another 
beau, and flirts with him in the face of the old one? 
\^Laughier.'\ New York is flirting with Russia, but she has 
got her eye on England. [Cheers.^ Well, I hear men say, 
this is a piece of national folly that is not becoming on the 
part of people reputed wise, and in such solemn and im- 
portant circumstances. It is said that when Russia is now 
engaged in suppressing the liberty of Poland it is an inde- 
cent thing for America to flirt with her. I think so too. 



57° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

\^Loud cheers^ Now you know what we felt when you were 
flirting with Mr. Mason at your Lord Mayor's banquet. 
\Chcers7^ Ladies and gentlemen, it did not do us any hurt 
to have you Englishmen tell us our faults. I hope it don't 
do you Britishers any hurt to have us tell you some of 
yours. \^A laugh.^ Let me tell you my honest sentiments. 
England, because she is a Christian nation, because she 
has the guardianship of the dearest principles of civil and 
religious liberty, ought to be friendly with every nation 
and with every tongue. But when England looks out for 
an ally she ought to seek for her own blood, her own lan- 
guage, her own children. \^Cheers.^ And I stand here to 
declare that America is the proper and natural ally of 
Great Britain. [^Cheers.^ I declare that all sorts of alli- 
ances with Continental nations as against America are 
monstrous, and that all flirtations of America with pan- 
doured and whiskered foreigners are monstrous, and that 
in the great conflicts of the future, when civilization is to 
be extended, when commerce is to be free round the globe, 
and to carry with it religion and civilization, then two flags 
should be flying from every man-of-war and every ship, 
and they should be the flag with the cross of St. George 
and the flag with the stars of promise and of hope. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen, when anybody tells you that 
Mr. Beecher is in favor of war you may ask, " In what way 
is he in favor of war ? " And if any man says he seeks to 
sow discord between father and son and mother and 
daughter you will be able to say, " Show us how he is 
sowing discord." If I had anything grievous to say of 
England I would sooner say it before her face than behind 
her back. I would denounce Englishmen, if they were 
maintainers of the monstrous policy of the South. How- 
ever, since I have come over to this country you have told 
me the truth, and I shall be able to bear back an assurance 
to our people of the enthusiasm you feel for the cause of 
the North. And then there is the very significant act of 
your Government — the seizure of the rams in Liverpool. 
[^Loud cheers^ Then there are the weighty words spoken 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 571 

by Lord Russell at Glasgow, and the words spoken by the 
Attorney-General. \Cheers?^ These acts and declarations 
of policy, coupled with all that I have seen, and the feeling 
of enthusiasm of this English people, will warm the heart 
of the Americans in the North. If we are one in civiliza- 
tion, one in religion, one substantially in faith, let us be 
one in national policy, one in every enterprise for the 
furtherance of the gospel and for the happiness of man- 
kind. \Cheers?\^ 

I thank you for your long patience with me. [" Go on ! "] 
Ah ! when I was a boy they used to tell me never to eat 
enough, but always to get up being yet a little hungry. I 
would rather you go away wishing I had spoken longer 
than go away saying, "What a tedious fellow he was !" 
\^A laughj] And therefore if you will not permit me to 
close and go, I beg^ you to recollect that this is the fifth 
speech of more than two hours' length that I have spoken, 
on some occasions under difficulties, within seven or eight 
days, and I am so exhausted that I ask you to permit me 
to stop. [^Great cheering^ 

Professor Newman then rose and moved the following resolu- 
tion : — 

^'Resolved, That this meeting presents its most cordial thanks to the 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher for the admirable address which he has deliv- 
ered this evening, and expresses its hearty sympathy with hi« reprobation 
of the slaveholders' rebellion, -his vindication of the rights of a free Gov- 
ernment, and his aspirations for peace and friendship between the English 
people and their American brethren ; and as this meeting recognizes in JMr. 
Beecher one of the early pioneers of negro emancipation, as well as one of 
the most eloquent and successful of the champions of that great cause, it 
rejoices in this opportunity of congratulating him on the triumph with 
which the labors of himself and his associates have been crowned in the 
anti-slavery policy of President Lincoln and his cabinet." 

After some earnest words by Professor Newman, Rev. Newman 
Hall, and Mr. G. Thompson, the motion was then carried amidst 
loud cheers, only three hands being held up against it. 

Mr. Beecher briefly acknowledged the vote of thanks. 

The Rev. W. M. Bunting moved, and Sir Charles Fox seconded, 
a vote of thanks to the Chairman, which was unanimously passed, 
and the proceedings then terminated. 



572 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 



OUTSIDE THE HALL. 

The scene outside Exeter Hall that evening was of an extraor- 
dinary description. The lecture had been advertised to com- 
mence at seven o'clock, and it was announced that the hall doors 
would be opened at half-past six. The crowd, however, began to 
assemble as early as five o'clock, and before six o'clock it be- 
came so dense and numerous as completely to block up, not 
only the footway, but the carriage way of the Strand ; and the 
committee of management wisely determined at once to throw 
open the doors. A great rush took place, and the hall, in every 
available part, became filled to overflowing in a few minutes. No 
perceptible diminution, however, was made in the crowd, and at 
half-past six there were literally thousands of well-dressed per- 
sons struggling to gain admission, in spite of the placards exhib- 
ited announcing the hall to be " quite full." The policemen and 
hall-keepers were powerless to contend against this immense 
crowd, who ultimately filled the spacious corridors and staircases 
leading to the hall, still leaving an immense crowd both in the 
Strand and Burleigh Street. At ten minutes before seven o'clock 
Mr. B. Scott, the City Chamberlain, and the chairman of the 
meeting, accompanied by a large body of the committee of the 
Emancipation Society, arrived, but were unable to make their 
way through the crowd, and a messenger was dispatched to the 
Bow Street Police station for an extra body of police. About 
thirty of the reserve men were immediately sent, and those aided 
by the men already on duty at last succeeded in forcing a passage 
for the chairman and his friends. 

Mr. Beecher at this time arrived, but was himself unable to 
gain admittance to the hall until a quarter of an hour after the time 
appointed for the commencement of his address. He bore his 
detention in the crowd with great good humor, and was rewarded 
with a perfect ovation, the crowd pressing forward in all direc- 
tions to shake hands with him. He was at last fairly carried into 
the hall on the shoulders of the policemen, and the doors of the 
hall were at once closed, and guarded by a body of pofice, who 
distinctly announced that no more persons would be admitted, 
whether holding tickets or not. This had the effect of thinning 
to some extent the crowd outside ; but some two thousand or 
more people still remained eager to seize on any chance of ad- 
mission that might arise. At a quarter-past seven a tremendous 
burst of cheers from within the building announced that Mr. 



SPEECH IN LONDON. 573 

Beecher had made his appearance on the platform. The cheer- 
ing was taken up by the outsiders, and re-echoed again and 
again. 

The bulk of the crowd had now congregated in Burleigh Street, 
which was completely filled, and loud cries were raised for some 
member of the Emancipation Committee to address them. The 
call was not responded to. But several impromptu speakers 
mounted upon the shoulders of some workingmen addressed the 
people in favor of the policy of the North, and their remarks 
were received with loud cheering from the large majority of 
those present. One or two speakers raised their voices in sym- 
pathy with the South, but these were speedily dislodged from 
their positions by the crowd, whose Northern sympathies were 
thus unmistakably exhibited. Every burst of cheers that re- 
sounded from within the hall was taken up and as heartily re- 
sponded to by those outside. Indeed, they could not have been 
more enthusiastic had they been listening to the lecturer himself. 
This scene continued without intermission until the close of 
the meeting. When Mr. Beecher and his friends issued from 
the building they were again received with loud cheers. A call 
for a cheer for Abraham Lincoln was responded to with genuine 
English heartiness. During the evening a large number of pla- 
cards denouncing in strong language the President, the North, 
and its advocates were posted in the neighborhood of the hall. 
A strong body of police were stationed in the Strand and Bur- 
leigh Street, but no breach of the peace occurred calling for their 
interference. 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON. 

October 23, 1863. 



Between two and three hundred gentlemen, chiefly ministers of 
various denominations, met Mr. Beecher at breakfast, at Radley's 
Hotel, upon the invitation of the Committee of Correspondence 
on American Affairs, for the purpose of wishing him farewell 
prior to his departure to the United States. The chair was oc- 
cupied by the Hon. and Rev. Baptist W. Noel. 

The Chairman said that they were met to express their sympa- 
thy with the country of which their guest was a citizen, with the 
Government which he upheld, and with the great movement of 
which he was an ardent supporter. Mr. Beecher had been for 
many years a brave advocate of the oppressed, a manly patriot, 
and he had shown during his stay in England a boldness not easily 
daunted, and a good temper that no provocation could disturb. 
\Applause:\ 

Dr. F. Tomkins, the secretary of the Committee of Correspond- 
ence, read several letters from gentlemen who were unable to be 
present, but who wished to express their sympathy with the ob- 
jects of the meeting. 

The Rev. Dr. Waddington read an Address, portions of which 
are here given : — 

To the Clu'istian Church under the pastoi-al care of the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher. 

Dear Brethren,— At a very numerous assembly of ministers and other 
Christian gentlemen, held this morning, to bid your beloved pastor an af- 
fectionate farewell, it was desired by an unanimous vote of the meeting 
that we should forward to you the subjoined copy of an address given on 
the occasion. . . . 

The following is the address adopted at the meeting : — 

" Sir, — I am requested by the Committee of Correspondence on Amer- 
ican Affairs, to give a brief hut full exi:iression of the sentiments of fraternal 
regard we cherish toward our distinguished guest, the Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher, and to the deep sympathy we feel for his countrymen, now suf- 
fering the innumerable calamities of civil war. . . . 

" We tender to Mr. Beecher our warmest acknowledgments for the serv- 
ice he has rendered to the cause of truth, of right, and of liberty by his 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON. 575 

manliness, high moral courage, admirable temper, clear intelligence, sound 
argument, and, above all, by the kindliness of his spirit. 

" It is known to us that even those who are opposed to war under all 
circumstances, frankly acknowledge that the tendency of Mr. Beecher's 
public speeches in Manchester, in Glasgow, in Edinburgh, in Liverpool, 
and pre-eminently in London, has been to produce in the highest degree 
international good will. 

" He has sought not to irritate but to convince. He has administered 
rebuke with mingled fidelity and affection. He has been courteous without 
servility. He has met passion with patience, prejudice with reason, and 
blind hostility with glowing charity. He has cast the seed of truth amidst 
the howling tempest with a clear eye and a steady hand — the effect will, 
we doubt not, be seen after many days. . . . 

" In this cause we recognize in Mr. Beecher a faithful witness and a true 
soldier. From the time that he stood up as a youth to plead in Indian- 
apolis for the liberation of those who are in worse than Egyptian bondage, 
until he confronted his opponents in Liverpool, he has evinced the sternest 
fidelity, the most unfaltering courage, with the most consummate skill. Our 
estimate of the services he has rendered, is enhanced by the remembrance 
of his forbearance and moderation at many a critical juncture. He urged 
the claim of the negro years ago against the selfishness of those who would 
exclude him from the labor market in New York — and no man has spoken 
in more conciliatory terms of the misguided men of the South, so long as 
the attempt at reconciliation, without the sacrifice of principle, seemed to be 
possible. If the energy of Mr. Beecher is terrible in the hour of conflict, 
no one knows better than himself that 'calmness hath great advantage.' 

" In the openness of the rebukes uttered by Mr. Beecher in this country, 
we have the guaranty that he will at home stand to his testimony as to 
what is sound in the heart of Old England. ... ' 

" We know that when the telegraph signals his arrival in American 
waters thousands will go out to bid him welcome, and in their joyful salu- 
tations they will not regard our testimony as impertinent when we say, that 
no man could have served the cause we love better, and that he has said 
nothing we could wish him to retract. We adopt in conclusion his own 
words on the memorable 20th of October: 'Let there be one alliance — if 
not in form — yet of heart, sympathy, and love between parent and child — 
for civil liberty — for Christian civilization — for the welfare of the world 
which yet groans and travails in pain, but whose redemption draweth nigh.' 

" With sentiments of fraternal sympathy and the most affectionate 
Christian regard, 

" We are, dear Brethren, faithfully yours, 

" In the name and on behalf of the Meeting, 
"BAPTIST W. NOEL, M. A., Chairman. 

"BENJAMIN SCOTT, F.R.A.S., Chamberlain of London, Treasurer. 
"FREDK. TOMKINS, M.A., D.C.L., Secretary. 
"JOHN WADDINGTON, D.D , Mover of the Address. 

"Radley's Hotel, London, Oct. 23d, 1863." 



576 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

The Address was carried by acclamation, the company standing. 
Mr. Beecher, whose rising was the signal for protracted and 
enthusiastic cheering, replied to the address as follows : — 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, — I propose this morning 
to say a good many things on a good many subjects, and 
I am influenced in the direction in which I shall begin by 
the request of the esteemed brother who has been pleased 
to honor me this morning, and to confer a favor upon me 
which I shall never forget. [C//cr;x] In conversation 
with our chairman I made some statements which he said 
would have weight with you, and I therefore consented to 
make them again. That, gentlemen, is my introduction. 
\Chcersi\ 

Now I wish it to be understood as a matter of fact that 
this Secession is rebellion, even judged according to the 
principles and professions of the South hitherto. Let me 
then go back and state generally that the South as a whole 
never has believed in Secession. On the contrary, it has 
been condemned again and again in all the Southern 
States but one, and has been only held by a small section 
throughout the country. Until this rebellion, in fact, it 
has never been held that the Constitution gives the right 
to a State to secede. When the Convention of 1787 came 
together to amend the Articles of the Constitution, the 
first thing they had to do was to ascertain what their own 
power was, and what was the province of their action, and 
the question arose whether they could proceed to institute 
a national Government. That, I believe, was almost the 
first question brought before them. After a good deal of 
debate it was determined, almost unanimously, that they 
should proceed to make a national Government as dis- 
tinguished from a perpetual Confederation. And what is 
remarkable is this, that the proposition for a National as 
distinguished from a Confederated Government was made 
by the delegates from Virginia and South Carolina, and it 
was opposed by Connecticut and some others — I forget 
which — of the Northern States. It was debated thor- 
oughly, and the Northern proposition that we should con- 
tinue a mere Confederation in perpetuity was voted down 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, L.OA'DON. 577 

by an immense majority, and it was voted in express 
terms — though it does not appear so verbally in our Con- 
stitution — that they should proceed to form a National 
Government in distinction from a Confederated Govern- 
ment. After the resolution was passed it was put — like 
all the other resolutions — into the hands of what was 
called the revising committee, and they, as a kind of ver- 
bal compromise, introduced the present phraseology, put- 
ting the words " Union " and " United States " in the place 
of " Nation." The change was unfortunate, but it was 
purely the work of the committee of revision, whereas the 
Convention themselves had voted the word " Nation." 
And there never was any change in that until Mr. Cal- 
houn's day; but Mr. Calhoun's doctrine was repudiated in 
Virginia and Georgia, and, if I do not mistake, in every 
one of the Southwestern States it was in a minority. It 
was also repudiated by our courts, and by the national 
Government itself it was judged that nullification was 
itself a nullity. [C/icers.'\ Therefore, the South in going 
into rebellion has not been following out a doctrine held 
by it from the first, but has suddenly reversed its own 
principles, gone against the records of its own parties, and 
dragged in this alleged right of a State, to secede, as a 
mere excuse, against the spirit of the Constitution of the 
United States. [Ifear, hear.'] I have the right therefore 
to say to you as ministers of the Gospel, as men who be- 
lieve in the powers that be, and in the legitimacy of unop- 
pressive governments, that this is nothing more or less 
than a rebellion. So much for that. \^Cheers.^ 

And now, my Christian brethren, I feel I have freedom 
here. l^Reneiued c/u'ers.'\ There are some things, you know, 
that one can say in a lecture-room that one cannot say in 
the pulpit, and there are things which a man can sa}'^ in a 
^social festival meeting of this kind that he cannot say on a 
platform before a mingled audience, where he is liable to 
have a sentiment cut in two by a hoot or a hiss. [^Lai/gh- 
ter.'] Now I want to introduce some matters here that 
would not well suit a public meeting. I wish to acknowl- 
edge the many kind providences which have attended me 



578 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

at every step since I have been in England. I go home, not 
for the first time believing in a special Providence, but to 
be once more a witness to my people to the preciousness 
and truth of the doctrine " God present with us." In 
ways unexpected, and as if the very voice of God had 
sounded in my ears, I have been frequently assisted 
during my sojourn in this country. When I returned 
from the Continent I had not spoken in public during the 
previous twenty weeks. I began my course by addressing 
about six thousand people in Manchester. I then went to 
Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Liverpool. The reception I met 
with at the latter town was very different from the "Wel- 
comes " of the other centers of commerce. I did not feel 
the slightest animosity towards the people of Liverpool. 
I saw that those who opposed me were merely partisans. 
[C7/(^i'/-j'.] I knew that the people of Liverpool were on the 
right side. I remember that in the midst of the wild up- 
roar at the Liverpool meeting I felt almost as if a door had 
been thrown open, and a wind had swept by me. I never 
prayed more heartily in my life than I prayed for my op- 
ponents in the midst of that hurricane of interruption. 
But it so affected my voice that a reaction came upon 
me on Saturday and Sunday, and I was almost speechless 
on Monday. I felt all day on Monday that I was coming 
to London to speak to a public audience but my voice was 
gone; and I felt as though about to be made a derision to 
my enemies — to stand up before a multitude, and be un- 
able to say a word. It would have been a mortification to 
anybody's natural pride. I asked God to restore me my 
voice, as a child would ask its father to grant it a favor. 
But I hoped that God would grant me His grace, to enable 
me, if it were necessary for the cause, that I should be put 
to open shame, to stand up as a fool before the audience. 
When I got up on Tuesday morning, I spoke to myself to_^ 
try whether I could speak and my voice was quite clear. 
\Cheers?^ Many might say this was because I slept in a 
wet jacket, but I prefer to feel that I had a direct interpo- 
sition in my favor. \Chcers^ 

Last night I was saying to myself, " I am going among 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON. 579 

Christian ministers, and I sliould wish to represent to them 
the state of things in New York," when my servant 
brought to me a letter from America, from the superin- 
tendent of my Sabbath-school — my dear friend Mr. Bell, 
of Scotland, by the by, '[laugJiter\ but he is a good man 
notwithstanding. \^Laughter^^ He said, " It may be that 
you will have occasion to refer to the report of the com- 
mittee who inquired into the case of the colored people 
who suffered from the riots," and so he forwarded their re- 
port to me. A gentleman who has been my opponent for 
the last sixteen years — a gentleman who, because he 
thought I was opposed to the best interests of America, 
hated me with Christian fervor — \laiighter-\ — was appointed 
on the committee. The testimony that he gave to the 
committee as to that riot was that, with the exception of a 
few leaders, it was the work of Irishmen. The papers, for 
prudential reasons, did not put that forward in New York. 
It was no more an American riot than if it had taken place 
in Cork or Dublin. Therefore, when misinformed per- 
sons in England say this riot is a specimen of what Amer- 
icans can do, I say it is a specimen of what can be done by 
foreigners, and by ignorance and misrepresentation. Some 
of the most eminent names in New York are on' the com- 
mittee — many of them devoted members of the Democratic 
party, strongly opposed to the Republican party move- 
ment. They collected upwards of $47,000 for the imme- 
diate relief of these poor blacks. The men, women, and 
children who were relieved amounted to some 12,000. A 
committee was appointed at once among the lawyers of 
New York, who gratuitously offered their services to make 
out the claims of all property of the blacks that was de- 
stroyed. There were 2,000 claimants who appeared, and 
their case was put into legal train without any expense to 
themselves. \C}Lecrs^^ The aggregate of their claims in 
the city of New York was $145,000. The committee's re- 
port contains the following account of the martyrdom of a 
poor black child during the riots: — 

" Early in the month of May a boy of some seven summers presented him- 
self for admission to the Sunday-school of the Church of the Mediator in 



580 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

this city. From the first Sunday he was the object of special interest on 
the part of both his pastor and teacher. Always punctual in his attend- 
ance, tidy in appearance, and eager to learn, he soon won the affection of 
all his fellows in the infant class to which he belonged. But though comely, 
he was black. The prejudice which his color e.xcited amongst those of 
meaner mold he quickly disarmed by his quiet, respectful, Christian man- 
ner. He was a child-Christian. What more lovely is there on earth! 
What more highly esteemed is there in heaven! Little did those who thus 
casually met him from Sunday to Sunday imagine the witness of suffering 
God had purposed to perfect in him ! At the time of the late riot he was 
living with an aged grandmother and widowed mother at No. — , East 
28th street. On Wednesday morning of that fearful week a crowd of ruf- 
fians gathered in the neighborhood, determined on a work of ])lunder and 
death. They stole everything they could carry with them, and, after threat- 
ening and affrighting the inmates, set fire to the house. The colored peo- 
ple, who had the sole occupancy of the building, were forced in confusion 
into the midst of the gathering crowd. And then the child was separated 
from his guardians. He was alone among lions. But ordinary humanity, 
common decency, had exempted a child so young anywhere from brutality. 
But no. No sooner did they see his unprotected, defenseless condition 
than a company of fiendish men surrounded him. They seized him in their 
fury, and beat him with sticks, and bruised him with heavy cobble-stones. 
But one, ten-fold more the servant of Satan than the rest, rushed at the 
child, and with the stock of a pistol struck him on the temple and felled 
him to the ground. A noble young fireman — God bless the firemen for 
their manly deeds — a noble young fireman by the name of M'Govern in- 
stantly came to the rescue, and single-handed held the crowd at bay. 
Taking the wounded and unconscious boy in his arms, he went to the house 
of an American citizen close by and asked to have him received. But on 
her knees the woman begged him not to leave the dying sufferer with her 
'lest the mob should tear her to pieces.' It was a suffering Saviour in the 
person of His humblest child. Naked and wounded, and a stranger, they 
took him not in. But a kind-hearted German woman made him a sharer of 
her poverty. With more than a mother's care did she nurse the forsaken one. 
A physician was called, and both night and day she faithfully watched over 
the bed of him outcast from his brethren. Our hearts bless her for her 
goodness to our child. By name she is as yet unknown, but by her deeds 
well known and well beloved. His distracted mother found her cherished 
boy in these kind hands. And when she saw him in the earnest simplicity 
of her spirit she kneeled in prayer to thank God for the fulfillment of His 
promise. ' God hath taken him up.' The lad lingered until Thursday 
evening, when the Saviour released him from his sufferings; and 'the child 
was caught up to God and the throne.' This is the pastor's memorial to 
little Joseph Reed, a martyr by the brutality and inhumanity of men, to the 
cause of law, and order, and right. A tablet to his memory shall be placed 
on the walls of the Sunday-school room to which he loved to come. Those 
who were kind to him we count as benefactors to us. May the God of all 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LOA'DON. 581 

grace richly reward them with the blessings of His love. Buried on earth 
without prayer, but with praises welcomed in Heaven, the chosen loved 
child of the family, ' Joseph, is not.' " 

The colored people sent in their thanks to the committee. 
There are blacks who can write as beautiful English as the 
white people of America, and amongst the blacks there 
are men as high-minded as any to be found among white 
men. Some people have said that blacks are the con- 
necting link between monkeys and white men. Well, 
if monkeys have endowments such as I have seen in black 
men, all I can say is, that it is time to begin preaching the 
Gospel to monkeys. \^Lai/ghter.'\ Take as an example of 
their intelligence the following address: — 

"Gentlemen, we have learned that you have decided this day to bring to 
a close the general distribution of the funds so liberally contributed by the 
merchants of New York and others for the relief of the colored sufferers 
of the late riots, which have recently disgraced our city. We cannot in 
justice to our feelings permit your benevolent labors to terminate, even 
partially, without offering some expression of our sincere gratitude to the 
Universal Father for inspiring your hearts with that spirit of kindness of 
which we have been the recipients during the severe trials and persecutions 
through which we have passed. When in the pursuit of our peaceful and 
humble occupations we had fallen among thieves, who stripped us of our rai- 
ment and had wounded us, leaving many of us half dead, you had compassion 
on us. You bound up our wounds, and poured in the oil and wine of 
Christian kindness, and took care of us. You hastened to e,\press your sym- 
pathy for those whose fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers had been tortured 
and murdered. You also comforted the aching hearts of our widowed sis- 
ters, and soothed the sorrows of orphan children. We were hungry and 
you fed us. We were thirsty and you gave us drink. We were made as 
strangers in our own homes and you kindly took us in. We were naked 
and you clothed us. We were sick and you visited us. We were in prison 
and you came to us. Gentlemen, this generation of our people will not, 
cannot, forget the dreadful scenes to which we allude, nor will they forget 
the noble and spontaneous exhibition of charity which they excited. The 
former will be referred to as one of the dark chapters of our history in the 
Empire State and the latter will be remembered as a bright and glorious 
page in the records of the past. In the light of public opinion we feel our- 
selves to be among the least in this our native land, and we therefore 
earnestly pray that in the last great day the King may say to you and to all 
who have befriended us, ' Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the 
least of these my brethren you have done it unto me ; come, ye blessed of 
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of 



582 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the world.' But as great as have been the benefits tliat we have received 
from your friendly and unlocked for charity, they yet form but the smaller 
portion of the ground of our gratitude and pleasure. We have learned by 
your treatment of us in these days of our mental and physical affliction 
that you cherished for us a kindly and humane feeling of which we had no 
knowledge. You did not hesitate to come forward to our relief amid the 
threatened destruction of your own lives and property. You obeyed the 
noblest dictates of the human heart, and by your generous moral courage 
you rolled back the tide of violence that had well nigh swept us away. 
This ever memorable and magnanimous exhibition of heroism has had the 
effect to enlarge in our bosoms the sentiment of undying regard and esteem 
for you and yours. In time of war or peace, in prosperity or in adversity, 
you and our great State and our beloved country may count us among 
your faithful friends, and the proffer of our labors and our lives shall be 
our pleasure and our pride. If in your temporary labors of Christian 
philanthropy, vou have been induced to look forward to our future destiny 
in this our native land, and to ask what is the best thing we can do for the 
colored people — this is our answer. Protect us in our endeavors to obtain 
an honest living. Suffer no one to hinder us in any department of well- 
directed industry, give us a fair and open field, and let us work out our own 
destiny, and we ask no more. We cannot conclude without expressing our 
gratification at the manner in which the arduous and perplexing duties of 
your office have been conducted ; we shall never forget the Christian and 
gentlemanly bearing of your esteemed secretary, Mr. Vincent Colyer, who 
on all occasions impressed even the humblest with the belief that he knew 
and felt he was dealing with a crushed and heart-broken people. We also 
acknowledge the uniform kindness and courtesy that has characterized the 
conduct of all the gentlemen in the office in the discharge of their duties. 
We desire likewise to acknowledge the valuable services contributed by the 
gentlemen of the legal profession, who have daily been in attendance at the 
office to make out the claims of the sufferers free of charge. In the name of 
the people we return thanks to all. In conclusion, permit us to assure you 
that we will never cease to pray to God for your prosperity, and that of 
every donor to the Relief Fund. Also for the permanent peace of our 
country, based upon liberty, and the enjoyment of man's inalienable rights, 
for the preservation of the American Union, and for the reign of that right- 
eousness in the hearts of the people that saves from reproach and exalteth 
the nation." 

Let this document be an answer to the harsh things that 
some people have said of the colored people in New York. 
I regard my reception of this document last night as provi- 
dential, because it reached me just in time to read to this 
meeting. [C/ieers.~\ I should have wished, had the time 
permitted, to make a statement respecting what is doing 
for the freed colored people in South Carolina, and in and 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON. 583 

about Norfolk. I have a son in the army, who has had 
an opportunity of seeing something in that respect. In 
schools, attended by thousands of colored people, adult 
and young, education is given without fee or reward by 
highly educated and pious men and women. My son has 
narrated to me many beautiful testimonies of the piety of 
the old colored people who attend these schools, and the 
great interest they take in the education of the young 
colored people. One old colored saint with wdiite hair 
made some remarks to him which struck me very much. 
He said, " We shall never get any good by this education, 
massa; we expect to suffer as long as we live; but our 
children will get the benefit of this education." Now, 
think of this old saint having passed his life in slavery, 
and being in a position in which, had his master lived, he 
would have had a refuge for his old age. Think of him 
now thrown out in his old age, in a state of liberty, it is 
true, but with powers ill qualified to use it, saying, " We 
have been praying for this all our lives, and now our chil- 
dren are going to get it." \Chcersl\ 

I cannot go into details respecting the state of the freed- 
men along the valley of the Mississippi; but I may say 
this comprehensively, that the churches of the North are 
taking up their burden and awakening to their duty. 
They understand what is required of them, and are deter- 
mined not to let the men come out of slavery and feel that 
they are worse off than when they were in it. I don't pre- 
tend to say that our people have not made mistakes and 
blunders; but, judging by the ordinary manner in which 
persons in difficult circumstances conduct themselves, I do 
say that the Christian churches in America of all denomi- 
nations are stirred up by the spirit of their Master to do 
their duty to the colored men of the North and South. 

I now proceed to another topic that is very pleasant to 
me. I want you to see how American Christians and 
ministers have felt during the whole of this war. I have 
here an immense amount of matter — [spreading out a 
number of printed sheets and cuttings from newspapers on 



584 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the table] — and if you don't believe me, I will read it all 
to you. \^Laiighter^ I shall first read extracts from the 
reports of various ecclesiastical bodies in America in 1861, 
the first year of the war. I have not packed or garbled 
them — indeed, they have not been put together by me, but 
by a friend in Manchester. I may read perhaps those 
which are least to the point; but I want you to see what 
has been the feeling of our Christian churches. I also 
want to show you another thing. Many of you are op- 
posed to war. \^Hear, /lear.] Now I must say that for any 
Englishmen to be opposed on principle to war is a greater 
mark of sincerity and frankness than anything I know" of. 
[Lai/g/iU'r.'\ You Englishmen are always fighting. Why, 
you have two wars on hand now, and I hardly know the 
time when you have not had one. The testimony there- 
fore of those of you who are opposed to war is worthy of 
double attention. [Hear, and laughter^ But really you 
talk to us in America about war as though it were just as 
pleasant to us as a summer by the sea-side; as though it 
were nothing to us to have our sons killed, or brought 
home wounded or maimed, or to have a widow coming 
home to her father's house with her helpless children. 
Some people seem to think that the North is in such a sav- 
age fury, that nothing tickles them more than to hear of the 
slaughter of 3,000 or 4,000 men. Oh, gentlemen, war is 
more terrible by far than anything which comes home to 
you. [Hear, hear.'\ You, who send armies to China to 
fight, or to the Continent, do not see what war is. Let 
war ravage your own island, — let it come upon London, 
and penetrate into your own homes, while the wounded and 
maimed are lying around you on every side, or brought 
into your houses, — then you will realize what war is. Do 
you suppose, brethren, that we love the war for itself ? Do 
you suppose that anything but the very strongest principle 
could lead us to submit to it ? [Hear, hear.'] I do not wish 
you to accept these statements on my testimony, but will 
read to you a few extracts which will show you how these 
matters were talked about in 1861. The following is from 
the report adopted by Ripley Presbytery: — 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON. 585 

" More than two hundred jears have passed away since the buying and 
selling of human beings as property commenced in this country, and the 
slave trade was allowed to be continued twenty years after the formation 
of the National Constitution. What a system of murder! What multi- 
tudes have been murdered in procuring slaves in Africa! How vast the 
number that died in the passage to this country ! How much death has 
been occasioned by change of climate, by excessive labor, by starvation, and 
by direct violence and cruel scourging ! Have not millions of human be- 
ings suffered death in the most horrible forms, under the operation of the 
system of slavery in this country during the last 200 years ? Does not the 
blood of millions lie upon this nation ? " 

The report goes on to make an attack on the Fugitive 
Slave Law, and to enunciate the obligation of the Gov- 
ernment TO PROTECT the four millions or more of colored 
people, and to secure their rights in accordance with the 
spirit of the Constitution. It then says: — 

" We now enter our s,o\emn protest agntJisf all coinprotnises with the moii- 
strot/s system of oppression existing in the slaveholding States, and the enforce- 
ment of the barbarous Fugitive Slave Law, and the giving of aid in any 
form to the system of slavery." 

The following is from the report of the Maine Confer- 
ence in May, 1861 (after Mr. Lincoln's call for armed sup- 
port): — 

'■^Resolved, That we will not cease to pray that Divine wisdom mav guide 
our rulers — that the Lord God of Sabaoth may give success to our arms 
and establish the right — that our sons and brothers who have so nobly re- 
sponded to the call of their country in this hour of peril, may be under His 
peculiar care — that we will supplicate God to interpose, to overrule, that 
these trying events may speedily result ia permanent peace — the liberation 
of the enslaved, and the ' opening of the prison to them that are bound.' " 

I turn now to the session of the General Association 
held in Indianapolis, my old home. I will give only one 
resolution: — 

"Resolved, That as Christian men, having a living faith in the superin- 
tending providence of Almighty God, we recommend the churches to be 
more instant in prayer for the maintenance of the Government, the integrity 
oi ihe. \]n\on,i\\e perpeticity of those principles of liberty upon which it is 
founded, not forgetting those in bonds as bound with them, and especially 
for the preservation and spiritual welfare of those who have volunteered in 
defense of their country." 

Now I turn to the General Association of Congrega- 
tional churches of Illinois: — 



586 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

"Resolved, That as the war is but the ripe and bitter fruit of slavery, vve 
trust the American people will demand that it shall result in relieving our 
country entirely and forever of that sin and curse, that the future of our 
nation may never again be darkened by a similar night of treason." 

Then follows a resolution urging the churches to attend 
to the spiritual wants of the army. Here is a resolution 
from the Welsh Congregational Churches: — 

"Resolved, That we hope and pray that God in His wise and beneficent 
providence may overrule the present disturbances in our country to hasten 
the overthrow of slavery, which disgraces our land and threatens the exist- 
ence of our Government." 

One from Pennsylvania: — 

"Resolved, That we regard the war in which our country is now engaged 
as a cojiflict l)dt2ueen freedoj?i and slavery, antl the advocates of slavery have 
tendered the issue, and it is the duty of the friends of liberty both in the 
Church and in the State, to accept the issue directly and give it the promi- 
nence before God and the world that rightfully belongs to it." 

These resolutions, you will mark, 7vcre all passed before 
the pyoclaiiiation of einaticipatioii. The following is from the 
General Association of Congregational Churches in New 
York:— 

"Whereas, the immediate occasion of this rebellion and its fomenting 
spirit was the determination of its leaders to secure and perpeticate the system 
of slavery; and, whereas, there can be no guaranty of peace and prosperity 
in the Union while slavery e.xists, — therefore, 

"Resolved, That we rejoice in every act and declaration of the Govern- 
ment that brings freedom to any of the enslaved, and earnestly hope for 
some definite and reliable measure for the abolition of slaveiy as the conclu- 
sion of this great conflict for the support of the Government and the Union. 

"Whereas, in His good providence God has opened the way for the eman- 
cipation of the enslaved in this land, either by the instructions of the Gov- 
ernment to military commanders to enfranchise all slaves within their 
several districts, or by general proclamation of the President, or by Act of 
Congress under the state of war, — therefore, 

"Resolved, That it is our duty as Christian patriots in all proper ways 
to urge this measure upon the attention of the Government, and to pray for 
its consummation, lest the condemnation of those who knew their duly to 
the poor and oppressed, and did it not, should be visited upon the nation." 

I read this to show you that while, on the one hand, they 
were conscious of their obligations to the Government and 
nation, they had also their convictions of humanity towards 
the oppressed. \^Hear, hear.l In 1862, these deliverances 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON. 5S7 

became stronger and clearer throughout the length and 
breadth of the land. Then we come to 1863, and first I will 
refer to the report of the Dutch Reformed Church — the 
most immovable church in the world. They come out, 
however, in a most unmistakable manner. The Methodist 
Church has covered itself with perpetual honor — thanks 
be to God for their fidelity. Page after page of their re- 
ports is made up of resolutions on the subject full of clear 
instructions as to Christian duty. Here is the testimony 
of the American Baptist Missionary Union: — 

'■'■Resolvsd, That the developments of the year since elapsed, in connec- 
tion with this attempt to destroy the best government on earth, have tended 
only to deepen our conviction of the truth of the sentiments which we then 
expressed, and which we now and here solemnly reiterate and re-affirm. 

'■^Rcsolvjdy That the atit/iors, aiders, and abettors, of this slaveholders' re- 
bellii)ii, in their desperate efforts to nationalize the institution of slavery, and 
to extend its despotic sway throughout the land, have themselves inflicted on 
that institution a series of most terrible and fatal and suicidal blows, from 
whicli we believe it can never recover, and they have themselves thus fixed 
its destiny and hastened its doom; and that, for thus overruling what ap- 
peared at first to be a terrible national calamity, to the production of re- 
sults so unexpected and glorious, our gratitude and adoration are due to 
that wonder-working God, who still 'maketh the wrath of men to praise 
him, while the remainder of that wrath he restrains.' — Psalm 76, verse 10." 

And there is much more to the same purpose. Then I 
have one from Vermont, and one from Maine, which is 
scarcely cold yet. [//ear, hear^ It is a most honorable utter- 
ance, drawn up I think by Dr. Dwight, of Portland, a de- 
scendant of the honorable and well-known Dr. Dwight. 
But I will not read all these documents, which are, however, 
quite at your service, if you wish to inspect them. I have 
not counted them, but it seems to me that there are two hun- 
dred of them, and if you read them all you would say there 
were a thousand. [Laiig;htcr and cheers.'] I seek by this 
not so much to make an argument as, what is better a 
great deal, to produce in you the moral conviction that 
the American churches, under great difficulties, having 
been involved in a trying crisis, have come to the conclu- 
sion, through their representatives, that this rebellion 
ought to be crushed, and that slavery should be destroyed 
with the rebellion. I have not seen Dr. Massie, but I 



588 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

know that now he has been to America, and seen there 
things with his own eyes, he is prepared to come to the 
same conclusion. I know that he is an honest man, and I 
am sure that an honest man could come to no other. 
\^Hear, hear^ 

And now it is not a question with us whether this war 
should stop. We are not going to stop this war, whatever 
you do. You have not — let me say — stood up for us so 
strongly for the last two or three years that you can influ- 
ence us now to stop the war. \^Hear, and laughter.^ I 
don't pretend to say that, considering your own difficulties, 
you have not taken the right path. \^Hear, /iear.'\ I see a 
great many things in your internal affairs here in England 
that I was not aware of before. We thought that you were 
all well-informed on this question, and that you sat in your 
ease and arrogance — allow me to say what I would say in 
the States — and that having thus settled your principles 
you refused to make an application of them to the States 
which needed them more than any other country in the 
world. \^C/icers.^ Now, I, find that you are far from well- 
informed, and it is a great comfort to me to know that 
your conduct has not all arisen from depravity. I shall go 
back and say, " You must not think that England simply 
refused to bear witness to her own principles. She is yet 
in the battle herself about this question, not as to slavery, 
but as to her own institutions, and if she had borne wit- 
ness, as some of her people would have done, it would have 
created a party movement." I shall not discuss whether 
there was not higher ground to take than this, and whether 
England should not have risen in the providence of God 
and occupied it, but you are men, and we are men, and we 
are glad to find a reason for not being angry with you. 
\^Chee>-s.'\ This has been our feeling in the past, and it has 
been unlike a common national feeling. Generally speak- 
ing, the uneducated and passionate men have their preju- 
dices and bitternesses, while the intelligent classes have 
their better opinions and judgments. But it has been the 
reverse with us. Those that have felt the most grief and 
indignation with England have been just the educated and 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON. 589 

Christian public, who have felt, with scarcely an exception, 
that England has been selfishly cold and cruel. I don't 
intend to say whether that has been your state or not. I 
am not here to make a case against you. I am a Christian 
amongst Christians. I am for doing what will unite us, if 
we have not been united before, \cheers\ and what will keep 
our countries together in Christian fellowship. [^Renewed 
cheers.^ And somebody ought to tell you this; a great 
many would think it, and would not have grace to say it 
plainly to you. \^IIear.^ But God has strengthened me 
to speak my mind to you, dear Christian brethren, and to 
tell you, that, so far as your influence has gone hitherto, it 
has all been against liberty and for slavery. I do not mean 
that that is what you meant, but I do say that was the 
effect of your conduct in America. From one cause or 
another, unfortunately, the moral influence of Christians 
in England, with individual exceptions which I live to re- 
member, has been on the side of slavery and against those 
who were struggling to put it down. Now I know that in 
such an hour as this, and in the presence of Christ, who is 
in our midst, you will receive such a statement from me in 
the same spirit as I make it. [^Cheers.^ I know that you 
will give this subject your consideration, — that you will 
revise your opinions, if need be, and not allow yourselves 
to be influenced by a commercial bias, nor by unscrupulous 
papers. \Hear, hear.^ I wish you to understand how much 
harm has been done on our side, too, by "the copper- 
smith." [^Ht'a>; /lear.] I beg of you to examine this ques- 
tion of duty to God's people — of duty to God. Yea, I will 
humble myseff for Christ's sake, and for the fellowship of 
the body of Christ, and beg of you for your sakes to ex- 
amine this fairly. We wish not to be separated from the 
English people. [Loud c/ieers.] We want to see the old 
links rubbed brighter. [Renewed cheers^ 

Let me tell you, however, we cannot stop this war — not 
if you were to line our shores with fleets, which I know 
you will not do; not if you were to fill Canada with your 
armies, which I know you will not; not if you remain still 
indifferent or adverse. That would make no difference; 



59° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

but is there not to be unity between the Christians of 
England and America? [C7/tv;-j-.] You say that we have 
retorted upon you, and said bitter things. Do you recollect 
that wonderful passage in Scott's "Antiquary," where a 
certain hero had lost his son and was next morning found 
by the Antiquary engaged in a work on which, having met 
with insuperable difficulties, he vented his grief and rage, 
although it, of course, was in no respect to blame? \Hear, 
and laughter?^ How natural a thing it is to vent our impa- 
tience and grief upon our own property or upon our own 
friend. And when we had seen our children slaughtered — 
Oh! what noble children have fallen in this war — what tears 
have fallen from us day and night, — and when we found 
treachery in the Government and on every side, Ave did 
hope to have received some sympathy; but instead of that, 
the w^ind that came from England was as cold as Green- 
land; and if, when we were disappointed, we said bitter 
things of England, because we loved her and expected her 
to support freedom, may God forgive us! [C/zav-.?.] 

You will ask me what can be done. Well, in the first 
place, let me say, dear Christian brethren, that I thank you 
very much for the kind things you have said and done for 
me. But I certainly would feel it to be a thousand times 
better, if every Christian minister and Christian brother 
would consent, as the result of my importunity, to open 
this matter on his knees before God. I have great faith in 
the guiding spirit of God. I do not believe he will allow 
his dear people of England to go wrong on this question. 
Then, next, I ask you to remember us in your prayers. I 
do not mean in those circuitous ubiquitie? that take in 
everybody and everything. But I ask you to pray for the 
North as for those that you believe to be doing a great 
work for God. Pray for the North as you would have 
prayed for the Covenanters, for the old Nonconformists, 
for the old Puritans, for Christians in any age whose duty 
it became to resist unrighteousness, corruption, and wrong. 
Pray for them as for men in that dark trouble in which 
God frequently leaves His people before the daylight comes 
and the glory of victory is showered down upon them. 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LONDON: 591 

\Cheers?^ But when the trumpet sounds for peace, and 
what are left of us are gathered together, and there are to 
be congratulations, and, as it were, divisions of God's 
spoils, I do not want that you should be left out. I desire 
that whatever may have been the misinformation regarding 
this conflict 3,000 miles off, for the future there may be no 
possible mistake — that there will be eye to eye, heart to 
heart, and hand to hand. We of the North represent your 
civilization. In the South, now seeking to become inde- 
pendent, there is not a point of sympathy that can attach 
her to England. \^Ii[ear, hear.^ If the North prevail in this 
conflict, and the Union be restored, there is not one single 
point of religion and civilization in the whole cyclopoedia 
of English attainments honorable, noteworthy, and world- 
renowned, which would not find something corresponding 
thereto among us. 

This train of remark might be indefinitely continued, but 
it is unnecessary. I shall go home certainly with a much 
lighter heart than if I had not spoken in England, and had 
not through my labor here — too brief for my own comfort 
— been permitted to see so much of the interior and better 
feeling of so many Christians in England. Before I sit 
down let me say that I would name all those honorable 
names — John Stuart Mill, Professors Cairnes, Goldwin 
Smith and Newman, Baptist Noel, Newman Hall, and 
other well-known and honored names — I would name them 
all but that there are so many whom I would wish to 
thank, whose names I either do not know or have forgotten, 
that if I were to try and enumerate those who have done 
us good and Christian service, I should do injustice to 
many. And for the same reason I will not mention the 
papers and magazines that have been towers of strength 
to us. Yet we will remember them; and the day will ar- 
rive, I trust, when those who have labored for us in ad- 
versity will come to our shores, and we will treat them so 
well that you never shall see them back again. \_Lond 
ami prolonged applause^ 

Several of the gentlemen present made brief and cordial re- 
marks, when Mr. Beecher said that a question in writing had 



592 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

been handed up to him from a highly esteemed minister to this 
effect, " What is to be the end of this ; is it to be a war of exter- 
mination?" "Now," said Mr. Beecher, "I am glad of this ques- 
tion. So long as there is a fraction of hope on the part of the 
South that the core cannot be reached, it will form a center of 
cohesion ; but as soon as the conviction enters their mind that 
slavery imtst come to an end, they will dissolve in that very hour. 
We have to go on fighting, until this conviction is produced. 
You talk of extermination ! Well, the South has lost two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand out of a population of five millions of 
white men. You might as well say that a father is killing his son 
when he strikes him one or two blows as a punishment. The 
North is not trying to carry moral conviction by force, but it is 
trying to uphold the Government and to put down a wild attempt 
to destroy it. We are trying by legitimate warfare to produce an 
impression that the struggle on behalf of slavery is hopeless ; and 
let me say, that when men here cry ' Stop the war,' when such 
cry reaches America, it means ' Let the South have its own way.' " 
{Hear, hear?\ 

Another written question, the purport of which was whether 
the tariff was no ground of Secession, was handed to Mr. Beecher, 
who replied, " Certainly not ; if any man in American were to 
say that the tariff had anything to do with this Secession we 
should put him in a lunatic asylum." {Cheers and laughter ?[ 

After other interesting interchanges and remarks, Mr. George 
Thompson moved the following resolution : — 

" That this meeting of Christian ministers and Christian laymen, as- 
sembled to testify their respect, admiration, and esteem for the character 
and anti-slavery labor of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, having listened 
with the deepest interest to his important statements, and wise and weighty 
counsel, desire to tender to him their warmest thanks for the faithfulness, 
affection, and fervor with which he has addressed them. They would 
testify to the importance and timeliness of his recent public speeches, and 
while regretting that he cannot remain to render additional service to the 
cause of truth and freedom in this country, would wish him God-speed on 
his return to his native land, and would assure him that they in future will 
cherish an affectionate remembrance of his short but truly friendly and 
most useful visit." 

He felt peculiar pleasure in submitting that resolution. He had 
been permitted on three occasions to listen to their guest, and he 
had each time learned something with regard to the merits of the 
question which he did not know before. He was, perhaps more 
than any living Englishman, an American; and though he had 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LOXDON. 593 

had, in years past, to say some faithful things there, and had suf- 
fered personally in consequence, when the hour of her trial came 
he felt towards her only as a faithful friend. He regretted that 
those whose duty it was to lead public opinion in this country did 
not in all respects do their duty, but he could confirm the state- 
ments of his friend Mr. Wilks, that every Englishman who really 
understood America had given a sound and true utterance upon 
this great question. . . . With regard to America, it must 
gladden the hearts of all to notice the wonderful change that had 
come over the country on the slavery question during the last three 
years. For one thing especially he begged to thank Mr. Beecher — 
that whether in his own pulpit or on an English platform, he had al- 
ways generously, nobly, justly labored in the field so bravely oc- 
cupied by his father before him, bearing his testimony on behalf 
of truth and liberty. [Loud applause.\ 

The Rev. J. Graham seconded the motion, which was carried 
by acclamation, the company standing. 

38 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 

October 24, 1863. 



The Union and Emancipation Society entertained Mr. Beecher 
at a public breakfast, on Saturday, thie 24th of October, 1863, and 
there was a very large attendance. In the absence of T. B. Pot- 
ter, Esq., the President, Mr. George L. Ashworth, the Mayor of 
Rochdale, occupied the chair. 

After the initiatory services had been fulfilled by the Rev. Dr. 
Parker and the Rev. T. G. Lee, Mr. Edwards, one of the secreta- 
ries, read extracts from letters of regret for non-attendance from 
Messrs. John Bright, W. E. Forster, and other members of Par- 
liament and prominent men. 

The Chairman said they were met together not so much to 
make speeches as to show by their presence their sympathy for 
the distinguished gentleman who had honored them with his 
company. They were met together to give the lie to that which 
had for some time been current in the country, namely, that the 
people of England had no sympathy with the principles and 
cause which their guest had so long and so manfully espoused, 
and which they were now met to show they were prepared to 
defend and maintain. \Applause?\ He deemed it a matter of the 
deepest humiliation that there was in this country even a small 
section of our countrymen who were prepared publicly to avow 
the slightest amount of sympathy with that atrocious and wicked 
system of slavery; and whatever faults we might have to find 
with the Government of this country — and I am one who thinks 
it is far from perfection — still on the question of maintaining a 
strict neutrality with America, on the whole it deserved our 
warmest support and sympathy. \Cheers?[ It would have been 
impossible for Mr. Beecher to have selected a time more appro- 
priate and opportune for visiting this country than the present 
juncture, in order to render, throughout the length and breadth 
of the land, an opportunity to Englishmen — at least a vast ma- 
jority of them — of expressing their honest sympathy with the 
cause of the North. The speeches which Mr. Beecher had de- 
livered in the more important cities of this great country, had 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 595 

gone a long way towards enlightening us on many points on 
which great ignorance prevailed. These speeches had dispelled 
much that has deceived and misled us, and he (the mayor) be- 
lieved, in the language of one of the letters just read, that there 
would be a rapidly increasing number of people in England who 
would rally round the standard of liberty, and show to the North- 
ern portion of the States that they have our sympathies, and that 
slavery to-day was with us just what it had been in times past, a 
thing we viewed with the utmost abhorrence. {Loud c/icet-s.] 
We could not look upon that struggle now going on in America 
with feelings other than those of the strongest sorrow. We could 
not contemplate the vast sacrifices of life and blood without feel- 
ing the deepest commiseration. But if, in this mighty and 
gigantic struggle, the result was what he hoped and believed it 
would be — the entire and permanent abolition of slavery, then 
terrible and vast as the sacrifices had been, that result would 
compensate for all. \C/icers?^ Let there be no mistake on this 
subject. Let us render all the moral support we can to the Fed- 
eral Government, and show them by our prayers, sympathies, and 
kindly expressions of aflfection that we feel for them in their 
present fearful conflict, and let us uphold the hands of our Gov- 
ernment in maintaining a strict and impartial neutrality. \Lottd 
cheers.\ 

Mr. Francis Taylor said he had been requested to move a reso- 
lution which was a speech in itself, and which would render it 
quite unnecessary that he should detain them with any length- 
ened remarks. The resolution was : " That we tender our thanks 
to the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, for the able, eloquent, and 
manly addresses he has delivered to thousands of our fellow 
countrymen, on the present national crisis in the United States 
of America ; and express our belief that the majority of the in- 
telligent men in this kingdom unmistakably sympathize with the 
friends of freedom in America, and approve of every effort made 
to maintain free and constitutional government. We further ex- 
press our desire that he may be spared to reach his native land in 
health and strength ; and we assure him he will take with him 
the friendship of many on this side the Atlantic, who will honor 
his name and remember him with affection." YCheers?\ This 
resolution certainly required no words of his to recommend it to 
the hearty approval of the company, and he was equally sure 
that Mr. Beecher, the gentleman referred to in the resolution, 
needed no compliment either from the mover of the resolution 
or from any other person. Certainly had not Mr. Beecher estab- 



596 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

lished for himself a reputation which would endure for all time, 
before he visited our shores, the addresses he had delivered to 
crowded audiences since his arrival would have secured for him 
our most hearty approval, and have entitled him to every ex- 
pression which the resolution contained. There was one point in 
the resolution to which for a moment he (Mr. Taylor) wished to 
refer. It stated that " the majority of the intelligent people of 
this country unmistakably sympathized with the friends of free- 
dom in America, and approved of every effort to maintain free 
and constitutional government." \Cheers?\ Since Mr. Beecher 
addressed the audience in our Free-trade Hall, and in various 
other places in the kingdom, comments had been made on 
these meetings by various newspapers throughout the coun- 
try. It was asserted by the Ti'/nes, and by its humble fol- 
lower in Manchester \Iai{ghtcr\, that notwithstanding all the en- 
thusiasm expressed at these meetings, they really meant nothing 
at all; that Mr. Beecher would make a great mistake if he 
assumed that in consequence of large attendances at these meet- 
ings, public opinion in this country sympathized with his friends 
on the other side of the Atlantic. All he (Mr. Taylor) had to 
say was this : Let Mr. James Spence in the advocacy of the 
Southern cause in England, try the experiment; let him go round 
to the large cities in this country and call public meetings, at 
which all who choose might attend ; and let him thus test public 
opinion and see whether it went with the South. [Loud cheers, 
and a voice: "Let hz'm take Liverpool first. "^ 

When he (Mr. Taylor) presided at the meeting in the Free- 
trade Hall, he stated before Mr. Beecher addressed the assembly 
that if any person wished to ask Mr. Beecher any questions after 
the proceedings had terminated that person would be at perfect 
liberty to do so, and Mr. Beecher would be ready to answer the 
questions so put to him. Mr. Beecher himself made a similar 
oflfer in the course of his speech but not one person presented 
himself to ask any question. [C/ieers.} It appeared however that 
some gentleman calling himself " a traveler"— whether he was at 
the meeting or not was not known — if he were, probably he was 
one of the bellowing bulls that disturbed the back settlements of 
the hall. [Loud cheers.] Well, this person instead of availing 
himself of the opportunity of putting his questions in person, 
sneaked of? to the columns of a sympathizing newspaper in Man- 
chester and said " it was impossible to get a straightforward 
answer from Mr. Beecher respecting the treatment of colored 
people in the North." Now, if this gentleman had appeared on 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 597 

the platform at the Free-trade Hall to put these questions, he 
would have found no difficulty in getting a straightforward 
answer, and no doubt Mr. Beecher would so far notice this ques- 
tion as to give during the remarks he was about to make an 
answer that would satisfy every one. [Loud cheers.'] He had 
much pleasure in moving the resolution he had read. 

Mr. John Patterson, of Liverpool, said that man must be very 
ill informed indeed upon an important subject, if he had not heard 
of the life labors as well as " Life Thoughts " of Mr. Henry Ward 
Beecher. [Applause.] Among the glorious chapters which 
adorned the page of humanity was a chapter which recorded the 
life and labors of the " fanatical abolitionists " of America. He 
for one gladly embraced the opportunity now afforded to him in 
this assembly of " fanatical abolitionists " \laiightcr] — to tender 
his thanks to Mr. Beecher not only for what that gentleman had 
done in England, but for what he and his friends had done in 
America during the past twenty-five years. During the few 
weeks of the past summer which he spent in America he had the 
pleasure of being introduced to Mr. Beecher at his own church, 
and of telling him that the people in England believed that 
America was much indebted to him and men like him for having 
the courage to stand up before the world and rebuke the inatten- 
tions and presumptions of one of the basest and foulest Con- 
federacies that ever disgraced humanity. [Loud cheers?^ It was 
important that we in England should speak out unmistakably, 
as well as be spoken to by the eloquent mouthpiece of American 
abolitionists. ... In England we were now pretty much as 
we always were — the minority only possessed of power and priv- 
ilege. But education was being now more generally diffused, 
although many men had it forced down their throats. Some only 
desired that the people should be so much educated as to make 
them subservient to selfish purposes, while the men who repre- 
sented the really educated intelligence of the country desired that 
the people of England should not be merely what Beresford 
Hope wished, a "well fed, well clothed church peasantry" [loud 
laughter]— -hnX. rather a free, intelligent, industrious, and self- 
elevating people. \Cheers?\ We owed great thanks and obliga- 
tions to the men who came to us with not only " 40-parson " but 
500-parson power across the Atlantic and who spoke words of 
truth, soberness, and logical demonstration, although opposed by 
the Times, Telegraph, and Alanchesler G2(ardlan. [Laughter and 
hisses?\ Many persons would say that the opposition given to 
Mr. Ward Beecher demonstrated the futility of his endeavoring 



598 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to speak to the men of England. It showed rather the force with 
which he has spoken to them, and he (Mr. Patterson) stood 
there, a Liverpool man, to say that the reception Mr. Beecher 
met with in Liverpool, exhibiting as it did all the vileness that 
still clung around them — all the miserable tradition of an intol- 
erant Toryism that pervaded a portion of the community; yet it 
showed still further how high the intelligence of Liverpool had risen 
— how amazingly its middle class had risen, and how, if Liverpool 
men were true to themselves, they could trample under foot that 
ancient and rotten tradition. [Loud cheers.] That meeting in 
Liverpool was open as the day. It had been stated that it was 
packed. It was untrue. Every opportunity was given to any 
man to attend; and pains were taken by their opponents to enlist 
men to come there for the purpose of opposition. But a lament- 
able failure the opposition was. [Cheers.] Not one-seventh of 
that audience held up their hands in opposition to the vote. 
Whilst he thoroughly sympathized with Mr. Beecher, and felt an- 
noyed that a gentleman in his position and from such a distance 
should be obliged to contend with the wild beasts at Ephesus 
\loiid laughter], yet he rejoiced for the sake of liberty that the 
meeting was held. [Cheers^^ Many meetings have been held, but 
the people of Liverpool had pronounced by tremendous major- 
ities in favor of the North. [Loud chet^rs.] 

The resolution was supported by several speakers, and passed 
with acclamation. 

The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher rose to return thanks, and was 
enthusiastically cheered. He said : — 

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen — I wish I could say ladies 
and gentlemen. But I begin again — Mr. Chairman and 
gentlemen — [A voice: The ladies are represented by the gentle- 
men.^ No man can ever represent a woman. ^Boisterous 
laughter and cheers.^ It gives me great pleasure this morn- 
ing to avow myself in some sense a convert. While I have 
seen, and still see in England, even more perhaps than you 
will admit of prejudice and misconception, I have been 
made aware of some prejudices and much misconception 
in myself, and in other honest men whom I may fairly be 
said to represent; and it is not the smallest triumph of this 
short course of two weeks during which I have been per- 
mitted to remain in England, that I have gained the vic- 
tory over my own past impressions and am prepared to 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCLJESTER. 599 

admit some things that I have stoutly denied to English- 
men of my own congregation, who used to say to me, 
grieved but not angered at the things I said about En- 
gland, " You do not know Old England." I used as 
sturdily to say, " I do." But now I shall say to them, very 
humbly, "I did not." \C]lccrs^^ 

I have been called to speak on a question which is very 
broad, very intricate, and multitudinous in its contents, 
because the question of America is simply the total ques- 
tion of human society. It begins at the top and goes to 
the bottom, and back again from the bottom to the top; 
from the circumference to the center, and from the 
center to the circumference; for there is nothing in 
political economy, philosophy, human right, or what- 
ever can spring out of this wonderful being — man — 
in society, that is not involved directly or indirectly in this 
great American struggle. And in speaking upon a ques- 
tion so broad, it was quite impossible to speak exhaustive- 
ly : the only thing that I have exhausted has been myself. 
\^Laughte)■^^ It has been quite impossible under the cir- 
cumstances, a stranger in a strange community, not alto- 
gether cognizant of the prejudice or the wants or shades 
of thought in a community, to speak upon this large ques- 
tion so as always to meet the requisitions of my audience. 
I shall not dwell upon the interruption, which I have taken 
very kindly — which even in its worst form at Liverpool, I 
do them the justice to say, was rather an exhibition of 
party feeling than of personal malignity \cheers\\ — and 
although it made my work very hard, God is my witness it 
did not excite in my mind the slightest animosity towards 
them, still less towards that very noble community which 
they misrepresented on that occasion. 

There is another matter I wished to speak of ; and that 
is, that the reports of my speeches are not authoritative, 
nor can they be so, until they have passed under my re- 
vision. And I wish to say that no man here is so much 
indebted to a class of men much abused and very little 
understood, but to whom I owe lasting obligations — I mean 
reporters for newspapers. They are young men who are 



6oo PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

generally sent out into meetings of all kinds, where men 
are divided, and where questions are discussed with warmth 
and excitement at untimely hours; and who, usually 
crammed into the most inconvenient situations, are obliged 
to take down either the whole or a part of what is spoken 
upon arguments on which they have not been thoroughly 
read, exercising at the same time an immediate judgment 
as to what should be omitted, or what the wants of their 
newspaper oblige them to produce. Then they are hur- 
ried back in the midnight hour to write out that which is 
so lately taken, and often because it is not presented next 
morning as some would wish, men blame them, and impute 
ill motives. \^Loiid laiighter and cheers.^ Now, I am a news- 
paper man myself, and have been made familiar with the 
life and difficulties which beset the corps of reporters. I 
have followed the reports of my speeches in England, but 
have never in a single speech seen that which led me to 
believe that any reporter had intentionally misrepresented 
what I had said. I have, however, seen the editorial col- 
umn, where I know that the editor, thinking he was sup- 
porting a certain party, misrepresented both my facts and 
principles. [^Cheers.'] And, if there are reporters present, 
I desire to express through them my sense of the obliga- 
tion under which I lie to their kindness and fidelity in this 
visit. [Cheers.'] Yet, for reasons I have stated, my 
speeches generally occupying more than two hours, and 
passing generally very rapidly over many great topics, and 
all having naturally to appear next morning, when the 
paper could not afford to put in a verbatim report, the 
reports, while presenting the general tenor of my speeches, 
have had such inevitable imperfections as to make them 
not exactly the things upon which to base an attack upon 
me. [Cheers.] 

I wish now, in the opening remarks which I shall make, 
to explain to you precisely the thing v/hich I have at- 
tempted to do in England. I have attempted — it is the 
keynote — the inward keynote of my whole progress here — 
I have attempted to use my information, and the position 
which you have been kind enough to secure for me, to 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 60 r 

promote a better understanding and a lasting peace be- 
tween these two great nations. \^Loiid cheers?^ There have 
been therefore a great many things I anight have said, and 
feelings I might have expressed, which I have not. But I 
have endeavored to bring all things to the bar of a manly- 
judgment, and to say those things which would draw closer 
the bonds of amity. \Cheers^ Even in the cases where I 
have brought up matters on which your judgment and 
mine have differed, and still differ, it was not so much to 
go back and argue them upon the merits of the question 
as it was to put you in possession of the American stand- 
point, that you might see, if we did err, what was the reason 
of our erring. \Cheers^ I wish, for instance, to illustrate 
it by one single case, and that was the Trent difficulty. I 
think it was in Manchester I mentioned the strong feeling 
that existed in America upon this point. And the London 
Daily Neius — a paper to which I should be glad to express 
the great obligations of American citizens \chcers\ — if I 
were not afraid it might be employed against it to dimin- 
ish its influence with Britons [" No, no,"'\ — I say that 
paper in a friendly spirit criticised my utterances, and 
said that it would damage my testimony with English peo- 
ple to be so far wrong and mistaken in facts about that 
question; and that it would damage my testimony amongst 
English people on questions with which I was better in- 
formed. They did not specify, however, what was my 
mistake. Now, I want just to specify to you how we 
Americans looked at that transaction, not for the purpose 
of putting ourselves right and you wrong, but to ask you 
as I shall, when I have made my statement, if you had 
been in our situation, and things looked to you as they 
did to us, would you not have felt as we did ? Is not that 
fair ? [Cheers.] 

You will recollect, then, that an American naval vessel 
by accident — if there be such things as accidents — over- 
hauled an English mail steamer and took from it two men 
who represented themselves as ambassadors from the so- 
called Confederate Government to the courts of England 
and France respectively. I remember very well, when the 



6o2 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ship came from Europe — and the tidings spread across 
America as quick as lightning could flash, that for a day 
or two the universal feeling was, " Here's a stupendous 
joke." Everybody laughed. It struck the comical feeling 
of the nation that these two men should have started off to 
represent the Confederates at St. James's, and in Paris, 
and instead, had found themselves in Fort Lafayette. 
\_Laiighter?[ And there was a feeling of immense good 
nature, and even jollity. Then, after two or three days, 
some lawyer-men began to inquire in the papers, " What 
is the law on this subject ? It may be a very good joke, 
but what says the law?" We began to draw down our 
faces and say, " Sure enough there is an England, and she 
will have a word to say. What then is the law ? " Then 
began to be quoted what the English doctrine was; our 
papers began to be filled with English precedents and En- 
glish conduct, and there was a universal feeling that we 
had acted according to English precedent. \Cheersi\ That 
conviction is yet unchanged; and never wiii be changed, because it 
was the fact. [Cheers.^ 

But I had the opportunity of knowing from my position, 
both as preacher, lecturer, and editor, that the feeling of 
the people was, " We are going to do what is right now, 
whatever it is. If we are in the wrong, we shall concede 
this matter; but if we are in the right, we will not budge 
an inch, neither by bullying nor intimidation." And the 
moment the information came to our shores of these facts, 
Mr. Seward addressed a confidential communication to 
Mr. Adams, instructing him to read the same to Earl 
Russell, the purport of which was, that this had been done 
without the privity or assent of the American Government, 
who were prepared, on the statement of England's wishes, 
to settle this matter amicably. Mr. Adams read that to 
Earl Russell, and it lay nine or ten days quiet. The letter 
being confidential, Mr. Adams scrupulously avoided speak- 
ing of it: but it leaked out nevertheless that there had 
been a communication from the American Government to 
the English, and everybody was asking what was its nature. 
This communication having been read, I think, on the 19th 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 603 

of December, it would be about the 29th that your Morn- 
ing Post — ^which is supposed to be a semi-official organ — 
declared that there had been a communication from the 
American Government, but that it had nothing to do with 
the Trent affair. And, whereas it was a communication 
expressly on that and nothing else, to this hour that paper 
has never explained nor retracted that malicious and de- 
liberate falsehood. From that point, I believe, compli- 
cation began. But there was something before that. 
[C/ieers.] Even before that message came from Washing- 
ton, and before the British Government had heard what 
we had to say, orders had issued that British troops should 
repair to Canada, and the navy and dockyards were put 
on double labor. England lias never shown want of 
promptness and spirit; but I believe you can find no other 
case in English history in which a misunderstanding be- 
tween ships of two nations has been treated with similar 
precipitancy, not waiting to hear explanations, but prepar- 
ing w^ar, or threatening war, before you could possibly 
have the real facts. 

As to what took place on the other side, I am alleged to 
have been all wrong when I said the American Govern- 
ment showed instant disposition to make reparation; be- 
cause, on the other hand we heaped honors on Captain 
Wilkes all through the nation. When we thought we were 
right, we did; but after we found out by the declaration 
of our own Government that we were wrong, point me to 
one instance, in which even the slightest popular assembly 
undertook to traverse the decision of our Government by 
showing attention to Captain Wilkes ? As to whether we 
did not use all possible speed, let us see what were the 
facts. Mr. Seward wrote to the English Government say- 
ing we were prepared to settle the matter satisfactorily to 
them, and awaited their demands. Many say: we ought 
not to have waited their demands, but given up the men 
instantly. But there were conflicting doctrines as to the 
rights of Governments over contraband of war in neutral 
vessels. There was the British doctrine and there was the 
American doctrine. From 1807 certainly to 1813, and I 



6o4 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

know not how much longer, the British doctrine was that 
you had a right to condemn a neutral vessel without bring- 
ing her into a prize court. That was the British doctrine 
and practice down to within a few years. I think the last 
recognized case — I won't undertake to say it is the last 
case — is that in which England acted upon the American 
doctrine, when they took a Bremen vessel and condemned 
her in an English court because she was bringing the crew 
of a wrecked Russian vessel home from Japan. She was 
condemned by a prize court, and that is the first instance I 
know of the American doctrine being acted on by the En- 
glish Government or navy. Now, when Mr. Seward wrote 
to Mr. Adams he said thus: Here is the old British doc- 
trine, which they have never given up technically, and here 
is the American. Which of the two is the British Govern- 
ment going to take with respect to Mr. Mason and Mr. 
Slidell ? If their own, we have committed no offense, and 
there is nothing more to be said; if our doctrine, evi- 
dently we must wait for them to make their own election. 
I ask you, then, was that not a courteous and just reason 
for waiting till the overture should proceed from the En- 
glish Government instead of from ours, as to what should 
be done in the case of these men ? \Checrs^ 

Now, all these facts are perfectly known to our people, 
and I ask you not to renew this old subject. It is past for 
good, I hope, and it rests in peace. But then, I want you 
so far to review these facts as that when men say, " The 
Americans have shown an arrogant and intemperate spirit 
towards Great Britain, without reason, in that Trent af- 
fair," — I want you then to say, " Every man, and I for 
one if I had been an American, should have felt just as 
they felt." \Cheersi\ But I want to say one thing more, 
and it is this: that we were all very much surprised when 
Mr. Seward issued his decision. So it was and so it 
stands. I make these explanations in the furtherance of a 
better understanding between us, so that there may be no 
unpleasant memory, and no coal that has not gone out in 
the embers and ashes of this old question. \^Loud cheers?^ 

Also I wish to revert to a certain topic, because I am in- 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 605 

formed that I have been destroyed by several papers, body 
and soul, honor and reputation, because of gross and in- 
tentional misstatements made in Edinburgh. I cannot tell 
the paper that has originated it, nor would I if I could. 
I am informed that my statements made respecting the 
circulation of money were totally at variance with the fact. 
Now all I can say is, if these statements were not correct, 
I certainly should be guilty of ignorance, though not in- 
tentionally. Let me then state to you, availing myself of 
this opportunity, what I understand about the condition 
of the North fiscally, and of material prosperity in this 
time of war. My venerable and excellent friend, Dr. 
Massie, is present \cheers\ — and I speak as before one 
who knows the truth, and although I have never till this 
morning seen him — may I see him a thousand times here- 
after — though I, of course, know nothing of his opinions, 
yet I know he is an honest man, and I know what an 
honest man must say in respect of certain points in our 
American affairs. I say he will not rebuke me for saying 
there never was a time of such material or moral prosper- 
ity as in the North at this time. Burdened as we are with 
war, there never was a time when husbandry was carried 
on with more alacrity or success, when every conceivable 
form of productive industry, and of manufacturing through 
its whole range, was more pressed by demand. It is not 
as it was in Manchester just before this war, when you had 
manufactured far beyond the consumption of your custom- 
ers. It is not speculative. There never was a time when 
monetary affairs were so easy, and I think so healthy, not- 
withstanding the contrary opinion of the editor of the 
Times' money articles. You say, we shall come to a crash. 
It may be we shall, though we are going to it by a very 
pleasant way. \Laiighter?\^ 

But are we doing this upon an inflated paper currency, 
without a proper basis and proper security ? Paper must 
represent convertible property. Is there more paper in 
circulation in the North than there is actual and available 
property in the North which it represents ? On that sub- 
ject I declare it makes no difference whether paper is is- 



6o6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

sued by State banks, or individual brokers, or the National 
Government; if there is never more paper than is needed, 
all then is safe, for there is no more paper than they have 
means to convert. Again, you may always issue more 
paper than you can convert in any one day. Three bills 
to one pound of bullion is a safe measure. The exact state 
of affairs in the North was, that this uprising so deranged 
business that it compelled a universal settlement. I don't 
know how it is in England; but in America we need a 
financial judgment day once in ten years, and we get it. 
These crashes, although in one way of looking at them 
they are unfavorable, in another are always beneficial. A 
new country must have credit. As countries grow old and 
rich, they can contract it more and more, but a new coun- 
try, that has its resources to develop, requires credit, and 
with it you must have the attendant evils of intense stimu- 
lation of hopeful and sanguine natures. Once in ten years 
you work out, so that the thing comes clear round. There 
is a kind of miscellaneous crash, in which every man picks 
up his own. The bubble is broken — the paper is gone; 
and the property remains. The man that yesterday said, 
This is my house, does not say so to-morrow: but the com- 
munity is not hurt; the property is there — the difference is 
that the owners have shifted. YLaughterl\ Now, what of 
these commercial reverses? It is said they are unhealthy, 
but it is not of that kind of unhealthiness that many political 
economists have believed; and these periodical settlements 
are always salutary. We had a settlement in 1857, and 
there was the less at the beginning of this war to be set- 
tled. But what there was, we swept out of the way. And 
since the day when the infant colony of Plymouth Bay had 
to pay fifty percent, for money loaned to her in England, I 
do not believe there has ever been so sound a state of busi- 
ness in the North as to-day. And your business men in 
Manchester will see that these reasons work that way. 
One thing more: the thing does not stop there. As there 
is more or less of uncertainty in the commercial world, 
men will no longer go on the credit system as before. 
They are buying for cash; then going home and selling for 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 607 

cash. Some of you in Manchester can say whether it is 
not the case here to an extent never before known, that 
American merchants are buying for cash. The business is 
talcing that direction; certainly it is in America. Not that 
there may not be facts the other way, but this is in the main 
true. Suppose there come by and by further financial 
difficulties, how are you going to bankrupt a nation which 
has no foreign debts ? You recollect the story of the 
Frenchman in Boston. He had got money enough and 
goods enough, but thought a man ought to fail when he 
could not collect his debts. We may fail so, but I don't 
see any other form of bankruptcy awaiting us. 

Our Government is issuing bonds that are largely be- 
coming the basis of the whole banking system of the North. 
The Government bonds become the securities of our State 
banks. They issue Government notes as their circulation, 
and although there is an immense amount of Government 
notes in circulation they are taking the place of the individ- 
ual State bank notes we have been driving in. I do not pro- 
fess to be fully informed, but my impression is, there is no 
more paper money in circulation now than there has been 
at many periods in American history, only it is not a circu- 
lation of individual banks, nor of States; it is a circulation 
of the total United States: and whereas before these bills 
had the security of what was in the vault of the individual 
bank or of the State, now the guaranty of these bills with 
the same circulation is the guaranty of the credit and total 
property of the United States. \^Hear^ Neither can I state 
(as I should have done if I had supposed I was to be called 
on for these facts) exactly how much has been invested; 
but probably four or five hundred millions of the capital 
of the North, not invested already in business, has been 
invested in what are called Government securities, which 
are just your "consols" over again. Our people feel two 
things — first, that our Government must stand ; and, 
secondly, that it will stand, and it is safe to invest in it. 
\Cheersi\ Our savings banks, insurance companies, trust- 
fund commissioners, and men who have in charge the 
money of widows and orphans — old men who wish to se- 



6o8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

cure themselves against contingencies and bankruptcies, 
men who have sums in hand and are looking about for in- 
vestment, are showing that of all securities none seems to 
them so sound as the faith and credit of the Government 
of the United States. \^Loiid cheers^ And hundreds of 
millions of dollars have been invested in that way; so that 
I may say the Government of the United States has a lien 
upon all the inoperative capital of the North and West, 
and it has become the interest of every business man 
and every moneyed man in the whole Northern States, 
to maintain the Government as the way to maintain 
himself. 

If it be said (as it has been) that I have stated that the 
Government paper had been issued as only three to one of 
bullion, I reply that I never made any statement on that 
question at all. But since the Central Government issued 
this paper — since it represents not only what has been paid 
in for these bonds as invested, but represents also the total 
available property of the Federation itself, it is a better cir- 
culation thaji that of local banks, which do issue three papers to 
one pound of bullion: that is what I meant to say at Edin- 
burgh, whether I said it or not. And it is what I say in 
this great capital of business in England. I cannot, of 
course, speak authoritatively in this matter. I am not a 
financier, I am not a banker, but a clergyman and a patriot 
only. If you were to get hold of a man who knew a great 
deal more, he would state the matter still more strongly. 
YApplausel\ If there is anything I have inadvertently omitted 
to notice on this fiscal question, I shall be ready to attend 
to any question that may be put to me now. [J/r. Beecher 
paused, and then resumed?^ I may presume, then, that you 
are satisfied. \^Applause^ 

Now there is some art in speaking so as to relieve one 
subject against another, and, having given you a few words 
upon currency, and a sound state of business in the North, 
I will turn to that letter in one of your local papers, to 
which my friend Mr. Taylor referred, containing those 
three questions, which the writer says have never received 
straightforward answers. I will endeavor to show you 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 609 

what a straightforward answer is. The first question is, 
" Do colored persons ever attend your church in Brook- 
lyn ? " Yes, by scores and hundreds. \Cheers?^ Second, 
" If so, where do they sit ? " Wherever they can get a seat. 
\Cheers and laiighteri\ Allow me to say our church will 
hold but three thousand, and it is extremely difficult for 
any one to get a seat. I have said humorously, in ex- 
postulating with our people, that they are sometimes im- 
patient of having so little use of their own pews, for which 
they pay an inordinate rent, " Gentlemen, you know very 
well when you rent pews here what it means; you pay 
three hundred dollars for a pew for the sake of sitting in 
the aisle, and you knew it when you bought your pew." 
It is expressly stipulated that if a man is not in his pew to 
occupy it within a certain number of minutes before the 
service begins, he forfeits his right to sit there. It is in his 
article of sale. We have from sixteen to twenty-five active 
and enterprising men whose sole business is to seat people 
in our church; and sometimes, when there is a public ques- 
tion involving great interests, the entrances to the church 
are thronged for hours before the doors are open. Well; 
when our own pewholders have to bustle for their own 
seats, because strangers may come an hour beforehand; 
when this has been going on for sixteen continuous years 
— if you ask me whether we take colored people by pla- 
toons, and walk them up and seat them on a platform — 
why, no; we don't treat them any better than white folks. 
\^Loud laughter and cheers.'\ We treat them just as we do white 
folks. \Cheers.'\ Now, let me say this: I have never exerted 
any direct influence on this subject; it has only been the 
Christian feeling and good sense of my own parishioners 
that have led them to determine their line of action to- 
wards colored people within the body of the church. And 
what does it mean ? I have never yet known an instance 
in which a colored man was refused a seat, if he were 
properly dressed, well behaved, and modestly asked for a 
seat. I have myself invited Frederick Douglass and other 
colored men to sit in my own pew. Sometimes one says 

to me, — " I would come, but I am afraid." But I give him 

39 



6 TO PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

a note to one of my friends and then he finds no trouble. 
To make so much of it, would seem as if I was boasting of 
the liberality of our people. It is just a matter of course, 
of Christian common sense. If my answer is not straight- 
forward, it is because I had to go round to get all this. 
\^Cheers and laugJitcr^ Third, " Have 3^ou ever seen any 
(that is, colored people) amongst your congregation; and 
would they be allowed to sit in any pew of your church, 
or intermingle with your white hearers ? " If my people 
were like the man who wrote this letter, they would not be 
permitted to sit a moment there. \Cheers^^ That is not a 
mere jibe. I will tell you in a moment why I make that 
remark. But I have seen them, not once or twice, or fifty, 
but hundreds of times. I tell you the truth, gentlemen, 
though we are not better than hundreds of other churches. 
We have been led by acquiescence in those great truths 
preached in Plymouth Church: — that man is not what he is 
on account of title, education, or wealth, but because God 
made him and loves him, and God will redeem him to im- 
mortality and glory. \Cheers?^ And that broad ground 
has led us to feel insensibly, more and more, that a man in 
the house of God is to be treated as we would treat that 
man on the threshold of the judgment day. And now, 
these words will go back to America, and I shall have them 
set down to me there, and I shall stand to every word I 
have said on America. 

The close of the letter, containing these queries, is as 
follows: " I could multiply instances to almost any extent 
of brutality towards the colored people in the North, 
and of kindness and indulgence towards them in the 
South, which I witnessed during a long and protracted 
tour through the States. Though my original antipathy 
to slavery was never eradicated, I came to this conclusion, 
— that a Slave in the South was a far gayer and happier 
creature than a free black in the North." There you have 
it. Ah ! there never was a serpent yet that was taught to 
speak in human language that first or last the sibilation 
did not come out. Whenever I find a man undertake to 
tell me, that any human creature, considered in the totality 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 6ii 

that makes up a man, in his body and soul — in his loves, 
independence, and purities^in his relation to time and 
eternity — is a better man in slavery than he is out of it, I 
say, "Thou son of the devil, get thee behind me." \_Loud 
cheering.^ On the other side, let me say pointedly, that the 
treatment of the blacks in the North wras bad — that we 
imbibed prejudice from the South — that the poison of 
slavery in every fiber of our body wrought out bad laws 
and usages; nevertheless, the party now predominant throughout 
the North, though once a small minority, has fought up against 
that prejudice and wrong, until at last it is in ascendency: and 
Englishmen are asked noiu to strike us, who have been martyrs 
for freedom, because of the prejudices which came from the men 
who are nozv in rebellion. [Great cheering.^ And I avow, there 
is a good deal of work yet to be done. We do not appear 
before you as a saintlike people; we are, just like you, in 
the midst of struggles where all sorts of influences are in 
combination. We have fought so far with complete suc- 
cess -thanks to God; but it is not done yet. There are 
many things we need to change, and are trying to change. 
All we ask is, that when our faces are as it were turned 
towards Jerusalem, you will not stop us. [Loud cheers.] 

And I say stil4 further, that in respect to that riot which 
took place in New York, and so much used adversely to 
us, I here, and accountable for what I say, declare my con- 
viction that that riot was nothing in the world but the sore 
made by a foreign blister put on our body. The rioters 
were as a body unquestionably Irishmen. [Cheers.] But 
you must not think I am saying this in any ill-will to them. 
These Irish laborers come to us poor and uneducated creat- 
ures, easily led by more intelligent men, men who work 
through their passions. By corrupt Americans, I am 
ashamed to say, they have been assiduously taught that 
the emancipation of the slave would take away from them 
the market of labor, and that emancipation would bring 
the whole South Northward; which is just the opposite to 
the truth, that it is likely to take the whole colored North 
Southward. But they have been stuffed with falsehood in 
the most offensive forms, for the purpose of making them 



6i2 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

mischievous; hence with the sting of the draft just about 
to be put on them, there was a wild furious uprising of the 
Irish immigrants. It was very cruel and wicked, but so 
cruel and wicked a thing was never done with so mucli 
excuse for the wicked actors as this. They were blind, 
ignorant, misled creatures, who thought they were fight- 
ing not so much against the blacks as for themselves. I 
make these excuses for them therefore, and I say this riot 
was an Irish riot, just as much as if it had occurred in 
Dublin or Cork, instead of New York. \^Hear, /lear.] 
When Archbishop Hughes was called upon to address 
them and stop it, the street before the Archiepiscopal res- 
idence was alive with the crowded thousands; his speech 
was reported, and he never intimated that he thought any- 
body else was engaged but Irishmen. He took it for 
granted it was they; he never excused them in any way 
by the oppression they had suffered in Old Ireland. From 
beginning to end it is taken for granted it was the work of 
Catholic Irish, and he was blaming them in his very 
maternal and gentle way for doing such naughty things. 
[LaiigA^er.l But what was the conduct of the city of New 
York? Between forty and fifty thousand dollars were sub- 
scribed to relieve the wants of those suffering colored peo- 
ple in a few days. A large committee was appointed from 
the most respectable merchants, men of the highest busi- 
ness integrity, and of the utmost honor and purity in 
private life. I marked every one of them as the men who 
have been my opponents from the beginning of this agita- 
tion for sixteen years — men who are intensely conservative, 
or as we call them, " Old Hunkerish." [LaugAter and 
chee?-s.^ But these men had their eyes so opened by the 
riot, that they followed their noble and generous instincts, 
so as not only to give their money, but to avow as plainly 
as words can say: " It has come to this. If the colored 
people are thus violently treated, we will put ourselves be- 
tween them and their assailants, and they shall, as long as 
we live, have the right to labor in freedom." \^Loud cheers?^ 
A body of lawyers volunteered to receive and put into 
legal form the complaints of every colored man who had 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MAATNESTER. 613 

lost property: according to our law, the municipality is 
responsible for every cent of property damaged in the 
riot; and there have been 145,000 to 150,000 dollars* in- 
volved in the complaints already made, or making; and 
legal proceedings have cost the colored people not a cent. 
\^Cheers.~\ The letter of thanks they wrote, which I believe 
will appear in the papers, is a composition of the most 
poetical English, and consummate Christian kindness, 
showing what the grace of God can make appear in the 
hearts of outcast men. [CAeers.] Read that letter in the 
report of the committee which has just reached this coun- 
try, and the reply of Mr. McKenzie, and see how an Old 
Hunker can speak. When I get back, I mean, the first 
thing, to go to Mr. McKenzie's store and ask him to honor 
me by shaking hands. 

Are there any other questions about these blacks ? 

Mr. Haughton, of Dublin: "Are we to understand that the 
practice in your own church is the universal practice in America; 
that the black man is as respected in other churches as in yours.?" 

No, sir, I cannot say that it is. Many of our churches 
are filled with men who are the first merchants of New 
York, or are politicians. The position of the black man is 
regulated mainly by the fact that he is the football ban- 
died between side and side; to treat him with public atten- 
tion has been to abandon one political party, and seem to 
show confidence in the other side. In many churches of 
New York — I cannot speak positively, but my impression 
is — they would not be received except in a particular pew; 
but a tendency has now been established, and is every 
week increasing, to receive them when they come into the 
churches. It is a process begun. Dr. Massie confirms my 
statement. I do not want to make out our case any better 
than it is. We do not move in perfection as the saints in 
glory do; all you can ask of men is. Are they in the right 
direction, and making progress ? [C/ieers.] 

I want now to add a word or two with respect to some 
questions proposed to me last week. A Mr. David M'Crae, 

*The total amount that the city of New York had to pay for property 
destroyed in that riot was about )^2,ooo,ooo. 



6 14 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

I think, of Glasgow, proposed a question as to the Consti- 
tution which I did not then quite understand. The gist 
of it, as far as I remember, is this: Speaking of tlie 
fugitive slave clause of the Constitution — his question 
was, Are you fighting for the Constitution with that clause 
in it ? If you are, how do you pretend that you are fight- 
ing for liberty ? Secondly, if you are fighting for Eman- 
cipation, you are fighting against that Constitution, and 
how do you condemn the seceded States ? I will answer 
by a statement of facts, and leave you to settle the logic. 

What is the relation of our Constitution to slavery ? It 
contains two clauses: one is the fugitive slave clause; the 
other is the three-fifths representation clause. I will take 
the last first. That clause does not legalize slavery. It 
merely says (as if the founders of the Constitution recog- 
nized it as a fact, but not a doctrine or principle), " five 
men other than free whites shall count for three votes." 
Now what is the origin of that ? When we first formed 
our present Constitution, having had ten years' trial of 
what was called Articles of Confederation, the difficulty 
that struck the Government, as it strikes every Govern- 
ment, was, " How can you raise funds to carry on the Gov- 
ernment?" First, taxes were laid on the lands in all the 
country. But it was found impossible to obtain the sta- 
tistics which were requisite for levying the tax justly, and 
therefore they must change their system. It was then pro- 
posed they should tax the people per capita. Then came 
the question: as the vast majority are white and free in 
the North, and as an immense proportion in the South are 
slaves, if you should tax according to the free whites, the 
North would pay nineteen-twentieths of the taxes, and the 
South only one-twentieth part, having the monopoly of 
wealth. Therefore the North said, in assessing the taxes 
you must call every able bodied black, as well as white 
man, one. The South said, " No, we are willing to count 
four as one." That was the extreme position taken on that 
side, and you see just how it was. It was on a question 
of raising mone}'-, whether the tax should be raised on the 
whole black population or not, or whether it should be 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 615 

raised on a white voting population, excluding Indians and 
slaves. And it was Mr. Madison who proposed a middle 
term as the compromise. He said, " Five shall count three 
instead of one counting one, or four counting one." So it 
was settled that in laying taxes on the South, there should 
be three men taxed where there are five black men in the 
South. But in settling the basis for taxation, they settled 
at the same time the basis for representation. A few years 
afterwards we ceased to raise our revenue by taxation at all, 
and the very thing on which this compromise had been 
made ceased to exist. Then came in the unexpected opera- 
tion of this clause on representation, which was a shadoiuy 
sequence scarcely understood at first to be of much impor- 
tance, but had become of prime importance v^\i&n the North 
was represented in Congress by a representation of men 
(voters) alone, while the South was represented both in the 
number of men and the amount of property. The South 
is represented both in property and in men; the North sim- 
ply in men, and not in property. This clause thus became, 
by an unforeseen accident, of strength to the South. To- 
morrow, if slavery totally ceased, that Constitution would 
not have to be changed in a single letter in that regard. 
There is nothing that guarantees or perpetuates it, or car- 
ries the consequence along with it as inevitable. 

The other clause on slavery in the Constitution, concern- 
ing rendition of fugitives, appeared in our history first 
when New England, which was just as much slave-owning 
as the South, formed the first rudimental Union. So 
jealous were the States of their individual sovereignty, that 
nothing but external wars and difficulties drove them to- 
gether, and they passed the substance of this fugitive slave 
clause. It did not appear in the Articles of Confederation 
in 1777, but in 1787 the present Constitution took away 
from each State the right to pass laws in contravention of 
laws existing in other States; that is to say, no man held 
to service in one State shall be discharged therefrom by 
another State into which he may go. It was a law for the 
peace of the whole Union, taking away the power of one 
State to nullify the laws of another State. Congress and 



6i6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the Federal Power are not even alluded to in the clause. 
Then it went on to provide that such persons shall, upon 
proper proof, be rendered up again to their claimants, on 
whom the proof was purposely left. That is the fugitive 
slave clause. In the convention where it was adopted, it 
was attempted to include this clause in the one that in our 
present Constitution precedes it, namely, in Section 2 of 
Article IV.: ''A person charged in any State with treason, 
felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice and be 
found in another State, shall, on demand of the executive 
authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up 
to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the 
crime." The State executive can only have conference 
with the executive of another State, so where there were 
crimes and felonies, the Article requires that the executive 
of one State shall demand of the executive of another to 
deliver the criminal up. And it was attempted to intro- 
duce into this the words, "and persons held to servitude; " 
but this was unanimously voted down, on the ground that 
there was no more reason to constrain the Government to 
return any slave, than to ask them to return any ox or ass, 
and they would not push the States to that indignity. 
Then the next clause is the following: " No person held to 
service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escap- 
ing into another, shall in consequence of any law or regu- 
lation therein be discharged from such service or labor, 
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom 
such service or labor may be due." When it was first in- 
troduced, the terms were " any person held to servitude, 
or in servitude." The first attempt was to reject that. 
Why ? Because it was declared that the Constitution of 
the United States should not recognize slavery. Mr. 
Madison has left his impartial and unquestionable au- 
thority on the subject, that the day was anticipated when 
slavery should cease; and the builders of the Constitution 
so framed it, that while it knew how to steer round slavery 
while it existed, it should be whole and perfect when 
slavery ceased. [C/iecrs.^ The Northern view, in reference 
to the operation of this, was that if a slave escaped from 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 617 

Maryland into Pennsylvania, and the master found his 
slave there, and brought proof before magistrate and jury 
that it was his beast of burden, he should take it back if 
he could. Thus it left the man to manage his own prop- 
erty without being hindered or obstructed. What, then, 
is the objection we take to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 
(not a part of the Constitution, but a law of the Federal 
Congress)? That to please the South it was laid doum to be a 
duty of the whole United States to hunt the slave down without 
PROOF, and, at the mere summons of the claimant, to deliver up 
the persoti claimed and saddle the costs on the population of the 
United States. I answer then, in respect to this whole sub- 
ject, that if to-morrow slavery should cease by the force 
of arms, the Constitution is not touched, nor is a right 
that is guaranteed by this Constitution impaired; for as 
long as slavery exists there is an article which gives a man 
the right to go and find his slave and take him back with- 
out molestation, and that is bad enough; but if to-morrow 
slavery ceases to exist, what change is there to be made ? 
For our courts have construed that the term "persons held 
to service " includes all apprentices under indenture, and 
that a slave is included in that, not as a slave, but by 
virtue of the fact that he is held to service. 

Are we then, by maintaining the Constitution, maintaining 
slavery ? No, not at all — slavery does not exist in the Con- 
stitution, nor by virtue of it. It has been settled a hun- 
dred times by the lawyers of every slave State that slavery 
is a local (State) institution, and can exist only by local 
statutes. Nay, the very conflict between the South, under 
Mr. Douglas, and the nascent Republican party, was 
whether slavery should be local and municipal, or na- 
tional. They tried to make it national; that was the last 
form of the political conflict between North and South — 
they seeking to show that the Constitution did indorse 
slavery, and we saying the Constitution never did, and 
never shall. I don't know whether Mr. M'Crae will think 
I have answered his question, but I am sure I have tried to 
give you grounds and facts on which every man can an- 
swer it for himself. [^Cheers.^ 



6i8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Mr. Haughton asked— "Is it not the case that William Lloyd 
Garrison and his party have invariably maintained that the Con- 
stitution is in favor of slavery; have not the judges of your land 
so interpreted the Constitution, and has not your Supreme Court 
decided that the black man has no rights which the white man is 
bound to respect?" 

No questions could be more pertinent. We all admit 
that slavery existed as a fact when the present Constitution 
was adopted; that two clauses were introduced to meet 
certain practical difficulties arising out of local slavery in 
its relation to federal government. The framers of the 
Constitution undertook to recognize the bare political fact 
of slave -property then existing in some States. They 
undertook to form a Constitution which should in the 
widest scope represent liberty, yet should not abruptly de- 
stroy slavery, but should neither encourage nor help it. 
Now, in every slave State that has given a definition of 
slavery, it is declared to be the condition in which a man 
ceases to be a man and becomes a chattel — a thing, not a 
being or person. With this definition before them, when 
the Constitution was in formation, after debate and full 
explanation of what they meant, they declared they would 
not put into the Constitution a description or allusion to 
slavery that should characterize it by its technical term, but 
only by terms that brought it out of " chattelhood " into 
mere " subordination." Therefore in our Constitution 
slaves are called " persons," always. This was no acci- 
dent — no indiscriminate use of words. \Cheei's^ It was 
done by men who said among themselves, " Not many 
years can pass before slavery will cease;" and what they 
tried to do was to have a Constitution that could hold 
together and keep us afloat for the moment, but yet should 
not give countenance to slave- doctrines. When a man 
undertakes to steer a ship he does not necessarily include 
in his ideas of successful shipbuilding all the shoals and 
sand-banks that may impede its voyage; and when the 
Constitution of the United States was formed, the formers 
merely made two provisions in order that local State rights 
might be divested of their power of general mischief. 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 619 

Now, as to public sentiment. There has been recently a 
small body of men who held that our Constitution did not 
recognize slavery as doctrine or fact. I differ with them: 
it does recognize it as fact, but not as doctrine. Other 
people say, " No matter whether the Constitution does or 
does not; courts that bind us have declared that it does; 
therefore let us break the Union in two to clear ourselves 
from complicity with it." That was the party of Mr. Gar- 
rison, and Mr. Wendell Phillips. The great middle-class 
have said this: " Slavery is dying, bound to die; free men 
made a Constitution for liberty, and made it so that while 
slavery was dying the Constitution need not be wrecked 
by running on it." 

As to the decisions of the judges, allow me to say that 
our Federal courts have been packed by Southerners; 
while the North has had either to accomplish this change 
by revolutionary process, or to do it by peaceable methods, 
such as are organized in the Constitution itself. We knew 
perfectly well it was part of the plan of the South by pack- 
ing the courts, and by process of construction, to transmute 
liberty into slavery in our laws, and in the fundamental 
law of the land. That was what we believed and prophe- 
sied. We warned the nation, and they would not be 
warned. That declaration was construed into slander of 
the courts and of men in authority, when I made it, up and 
down through the land, and said, "The South are taking 
away your Constitution by dry-rot [rZ/rtv-^] — but give us 
time, and we will by popular discussions reverse this policy, 
and fill Congress and the courts with different men, and 
then we will reconstrue it back again, and we will find yet 
the voice of liberty that shall stand by the Constitution, 
and say unto the bondsman, ' Come forth,' and he shall 
come forth, and stand among living men, a man again." 
\Cheers^ This was my doctrine as distinguished from 
that of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Garrison. I have said, " Give 
us time; there are in our Constitution and in our nation 
those elements which will bring back to us liberty in the 
Constitution itself." The South knew it just as well as 
the North. \Checrs^^ But they lay in wait and watched. 



620 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and the moment that discussion had produced a majority 
for us and Mr. Lincoln was elected, they rebelled. What- 
ever else you may say about Southern men, it must be 
said that they are as sagacious as children of darkness. 
\Chcers^ And we said: "So long as our courts are cor- 
rupted and construe the Constitution adverse to liberty, 
we cannot help ourselves. Wherever they do wrong to us, 
we will bear the wrong; but when they command us to do 
wrong to others, we will not; we will take a remedy; it is 
only a question of time when we put this thing right." We 
said, "Wait — there is liberty in patience:" they said, 
" There is safety only in rebellion;" so they rebelled. \_Ap- 
plausei\ 

\Another inquiry was here addressed to Mr. Beecher as to 
the Dred Scott decision^ The friends of the judge who 
made that decision have thought it convenient to deny that 
he ever used the words imputed to him, that the black 
man has no rights which whites are bound to respect; but 
whether he did or not, it is universally conceded by our 
lawyers that it was not the point before the court, but an 
extra-judicial opinion. He was a Maryland slaveholding- 
judge: the very instrument by which the South meant to 
transmute our institutions. But what he said was his own 
opinion, not a legal decision. 

\Another questioner asked if the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 
was still par-t of the Constitution?^ It never was part of the 
Constitution. In England your Constitution is what your 
Parliament determines to be law; in America our Consti- 
tution is what was originally written. There is a marked 
distinction between law founded on written principles, and 
those written principles, that we call the Constitution, to 
which all laws must conform; so that if your Parliament 
had passed a Fugitive Slave Law, it would become part and 
parcel of the British Constitution, but with us the State Con- 
stitution and the National Constitution stand unchanged by 
legislation. If the Constitution is contravened by laws, State 
or Federal, based on other than the principles it enunciates, 
the courts set them aside. The Fugitive Slave Law is simply 
a law, not a part of the Constitution ; which we hold to be an 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 621 

outrage, yet inoperative, as having no power beyond the 
year in which it was passed. It is just as dead now, and 
has been the last eight or nine years, as the snake's skin 
that was sloughed ten years ago. It is said we ought to 
have abolished it. When Congress came together they 
passed so many reformatory laws that it was thought 
seriously they should abolish this; but they said — we are 
charged with coming together for revolutionary purposes, 
and to destroy the local municipal power of the States, 
and we must not do anything in our national legislation 
that shall countenance the doctrine that we are revolution- 
izing State rights. 

\A gentleman asked how the great religious associations 
in America regarded the anti-slavery qtiestion.'\ There are 
two parties — one is very small and able, and is called 
Abolitionist ; the other comprises all the rest of the North, 
and is called Anti-slavery. The distinction is not one of 
doctrine, but of method. Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips said 
the North must save itself by disunion ; the great body of 
those who hated slavery said, we cannot consent to that. 
I was one among the latter, from first to last, and that 
paragraph in the newspapers which says I once said "there 
could be no getting rid of slavery under the Constitu- 
tion " is a total and absolute falsehood. [Cheers.^ I would 
not burn a barn in order to get rid of the rats. [Great 
laughter^ We have always said, the thing is bad enough, 
but not so bad but we can cure it by moral means. I have 
avowed over and over again to Southern slaveholders : 
" You shall not go off. We will hold you in the bosom of 
liberty until your slavery is dead." \Cheers^ This is the 
point which you English are liable to misunderstand. A 
great many good men seem to you to have paltered and 
connived ; but you should recollect it belongs to the nat- 
ure of free discussion and moral suasion to take time and 
patience. You cannot convert a whole nation as you may 
one man, by sitting down and talking to him. Prejudices 
melt slowly, but we have always had such faith in the 
ultimate victory of Liberty over Slavery that we have 
said, "With God on our side we can fight and shall win," 



62 2 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

[C/ieers.] Those slavery-haters who were opposed to any 
decisive and summary remedy as too dangerous, were 
called Anti-slavery men ; those who were in favor of im- 
mediate disruption, as the summary and necessary remedy, 
were called Abolitionists: that was the distinction. But 
now there is no distinction at all. Mr. Garrison and Mr. 
Phillips are both of them my personal friends. I would 
not for all the world say a word in England that should 
carry back pain to their hearts; and although I have dif- 
fered from them all my life long, I have never failed to see 
that men more heroic in asserting a great principle never 
existed in the world. Mr. Garrison has said at a public 
meeting, that when he declared that the Constitution in- 
volved slavery, he never expected to see the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation of the President of the United States. 
[C/ieers.] I can tell you there is no more welcome speaker 
in any part of the United States, than that man of genuine 
senatorial nature, of polished scholarship, of exquisite 
gentlemanly manners, of most truly Christian feelings and 
sentiments, even if sometimes over excited, — Mr. Wendell 
Phillips. But we are all one to-day. There are now but 
two parties in the North. An overwhelming majority say: 
" Since they have taken the sword, let slavery perish by 
the sword." [C/i^ers.l True! there is a small party that 
lives in crevices and cracks, — a small malignant party 
called "Peace Democrats," with that thrice-rotten Catiline 
Wood at the head of it, whom your Times newspaper is 
accustomed to hold up as the exponent of American peace 
doctrine. Him I have heard praised by the lips of Chris- 
tian men, who, if they could know his crimes, vices, and 
Satanic wickedness, would blow him from their parlors, 
as you do Sepoys from the mouths of your cannon. \Great 
cheering?^ 

Mr. Robertson asked Mr. Beecher's attention to two clauses in 
the Constitution, frequently quoted to demonstrate that it was 
pro-slavery, — the clause where Congress legalized the slave-trade 
until 1808, and the clause requiring the Executive to lend assist- 
ance to any State Government in case of domestic insurrection. 
A third argument was the New England States repealing the 
Personal Liberty Bill, and recognizing the Fugitive Slave Law. 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, MANCHESTER. 623 

If you ask me whether I think what was then done was 
ineffably wicked, I say yes; but that it has no force now, 
everybody admits. When this Constitution was made, the 
question was, how much the separate States would give 
up, in order to endue the central Federal Government 
with authority — how much of sovereignty the Federal Govern- 
ment should receive from the States that had thus far held the 
whole sovereignty. They proposed to give the Government 
in Congress the power to abolish the slave-trade, but they 
would not let them have that power till 1808. It was then 
not a question of the Constitution at all, but of the conven- 
tion of these sovereign States, and they refused to put into the 
hands of the Federal Government until such a date the poiver 
which after that date the Government was to have. In all 
these stages, it was the opinion of every man who had part 
in founding the Constitution, that slavery was dying, and 
they did not feel as you and I would have felt, but said: 
" Ease it off in every way." Slavery was like some brigand 
brought into an Alpine convent, where he was given a 
room and a place to prepare to die in, decently. On the 
contrary, the old brigand did not die, but called in his 
confederates, and domineered over the very hospital where 
he was being nursed for Christian burial. As to the pre- 
vention of rebellion in any State, the National Govern- 
ment is of course bound to exert its whole power to save 
any State from the intestine mischiefs of insurrection. If 
this covers slavery as much as liberty, yet because it is a 
principle born of liberty, slavery gets the benefit of it. 
Every nation must undertake this duty; the hand to which 
you give the national sword must defend every part of the 
nation from internal disorder. The repealing of the Lib- 
erty Bill took place in only one or two States. 

I wish to say that I feel convinced that, when Dr. Massie 
issues his report of his visit, he will be able to say he 
found the educated, intelligent, and religious-minded peo- 
ple of the North, wherever he went, settled down to the 
conclusion as final and irremovable, that this war must be 
supported till rebellion shall be crushed, and that rebell- 
ion cannot be crushed till slavery has been destroyed. I 



624 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

do not mean merely what you mean here by the *' intelli- 
gent classes." The phrase with us includes farmers, me- 
chanics, the very bulk of our people. For it is the legitimate 
effect of democratic instruction, that no line can be drawn 
between the college-educated man at the top, and the com- 
mon-school-educated man at the bottom. A thoroughly 
ed'ucated common people, with collegiate men to be their 
leaders and mouthpieces, in sympathy with them, — all 
moving together, — is better than any society where the 
bottom is ignorant, and the top is educated. \Cheers^ 

With some further remarks Mr. Beecher concluded, having 

spoken nearly two hours. 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LIVERPOOL. 

October 30, 1863. 



Mr. Beecher was entertained by the members of the Liverpool 
Emancipation Society at a public breakfast in the St. James's 
Hall, Lime street, prior to his return to America. A party of 
about two hundred ladies and gentlemen sat down at ten o'clock 
to the repast. The chair was occupied by Mr. Charles Wilson, 
president of the Society. 

The Chairman said : " It gives me great pleasure to preside, 
as I have no doubt it also gives you great pleasure to be present 
on this, which may be the last, occasion on which Mr. Beecher 
will ever address an English audience ; and I feel that I may 
thank him in your name, in my own, and in the name of the 
friends of Emancipation and of Union generally, for the ability, 
the power, the kindly good-will, with which he has advocated the 
cause of liberty during his stay in England. [Hear, /icar.] He 
has stated publicly that his desire is to draw closer the bonds of 
amity and good fellowship between his country and ours [cheers] 
— and if I have one wish above another it is to do what little I can 
to promote kind and generous feeling ' between the two great 
nations which speak the English language, and which are alike 
entitled to the English name.' [Cheers.'] I have lived in both 
countries, and I can never forget the kindness and the hospitality 
which I and my family experienced when in America ; and I bear 
this testimony, that there is more kindly feeling in the Americans 
towards England and the English than there is here towards 
America and the Americans. [Hear, hear, and applause^^ It is 
not unnatural that it should be so. They have ties and affections 
towards the land of their forefathers which we cannot have to- 
wards any new country. This island contains the ashes of their 
ancestors. She is the place from whence they sprung. To them 
she is ever their mother-country — their dear Old England. They 
claim her as well as we. Every American who conies to England 
makes, as it were, a pilgrimage to the old home of his family. 
. . . As Earl Russell said the other day, they have our lan- 
guage, our literature, our laws, our early history is also theirs. 
40 



626 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

These appeal to the understanding and the intellect ; but those 
quiet spots, the homes and the graves of their kindred, bind their 
very hearts to England. O, let us cherish, and seek to return 
the love that ever flows towards us with the Atlantic wave. 

" Now, let me congratulate you, Mr. Beecher, on the success 
which has attended your recent efforts. \CIleers^^ In the capital 
of Scotland you had the opportunity of addressing perhaps the 
most learned, the most scientific, the most critical [/war, hcar\ — 
and, at that particular juncture, the most philanthropic assembly 
which could be got together in this kingdom. I understand that 
there was not one dissentient voice. [C/icers.] In the capital of 
England no room could be found large enough to contain one- 
half of those who flocked to hear and support you. [Hear, hear.l 
You have had large and influential meetings in other great towns 
and cities ; and, sir, you have fought with beasts at Ephesus 
[hear, hear] — but, even here, the closing scenes must have con- 
vinced you how impotent were the bellowings and bowlings, the 
occasional bleatings and cacklings of the Southern hirelings to 
stifle the voice of Liverpool for freedom. \Applause?\ You will 
relate these things when you go home." The chairman con- 
cluded by further congratulations to Mr. Beecher on the success 
which had attended his labors in England. 

Mr. C. E. Rawlins, Jr., read a formal congratulatory Address 
from the Society to their guest, and the motion was unanimously 
adopted with a display of enthusiastic feeling. 

Mr. Beecher, responded as follows: — 

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, although this is a 
festive scene, it is rather with feelings of sadness and solem- 
nity that I stand in your midst; for the hours are num- 
bered that I am to be with you, and the ship is now wait- 
ing that I trust will bear me safely to my native land. If 
already I have to the full those sentiments of reverence 
and even romantic attachment to the memories, to the 
names, to the truths, and to the very legends of Old En- 
gland which have been so beautifully alluded to by the 
chairman on this occasion — if I had already that prepara- 
tion, how much, working on that predisposition, do you 
suppose has been the kindness, the good cheer, the help- 
fulness, which I have received from more noble English 
hands and hearts than I can name or even now remember. 
I have to thank them for almost everything, and I have 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LLVERFOOL. 627 

almost nothing to regret in my personal intercourse with 
the English people; for I am too old a navigator to think 
it a misfortune to have steered my bark in a flood or even a 
storm, and what few waves have dashed over the bows and 
wetted the deck did not send me below whining and cry- 
ing. \HearJiear,and laitgJiteri\ It was a matter of course. 
I accepted it with good nature at the time. I look back 
on it, on the whole, with pleasure now; for storms, when 
they are past, give us on their back the rainbow, and now 
even in those discordant notes I find some music. \_Ap- 
plause.'\ I had a thousand times rather that England should 
be so sensitive as to quarrel with me than that she should 
have been so torpid and dead as not to have responded at 
a stroke. [C/ieers.~\ I go back to my native land; but be 
sure, sir, and be sure, ladies and gentlemen that have 
kindly presented to me this address, that though I needed 
no such spur I shall accept the incitement of it to labor 
there for a better understanding and for an abiding peace 
between these two great nations. [Hear, and cheers.^ 

I do not know that my hardest labor is accomplished on 
this side. [Hear, hear.^ I know not what is before me — 
what criticisms may be made upon my course. I think it 
likely that many papers that never have been ardent ad- 
mirers of mine will find great fault with my statements, 
will controvert my facts, will traverse my reasonings. I do 
not know but that men will say that I have conceded too 
much; and that, melting under the influence of England, I 
have not been as sturdy in my blows here as I was in my own 
land. [Laughter.^ One thing is very certain, that while, before 
I came here, I always attempted to speak the words of truth, 
even if they were not of soberness [laiighte?-'] — so here I have 
endeavored to know only that which made for truth first — 
love and peace next. \_Cheers.'\ Of course I have not said 
everything that I knew. So to do, would have been to 
talk in season and out of season, and fail to promote the 
sublimest ends that a Christian man or a patriot can con- 
template — the welfare of two great allied nations. [Cheers.l 
I should have been foolish if I had left the things which 
made for peace and dug up the things that would have 



628 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

made offense. \^Rcneived cheers?^ Yet the peaceful course 
was not inconsistent with frankness, with fidelity, and 
with a due statement of that blame which we have felt 
attached to the course of England in this conflict. [//<'«;-, 
hear^ 

I shall go back to represent to my own countrymen on 
fitting occasions what I have discovered of the reasons for 
the recent antagonism of England to America. And I shall 
have to say primarily that the mouth and the tongue of En- 
gland have been to a very great extent as were the mouth and 
the tongue of old of those poor wretches that were pos- 
sessed of the devil, — not in their own control. \^Laiighter 
and applause?^ The institutions of England — for England 
is pre-eminently a nation of institutions — the institutions 
of England have been very largely controlled by a limited 
class of men; and, as a general thing, the organs of ex- 
pression have gone with the dominant institutions of the 
land. Now it takes time for a great unorganized, and to 
a certain extent unvoting, public opinion, underneath in- 
stitutions, to create that grand swell that lifts the whole 
ark up \Jiear., hea}\ and cliccrs\\ and so it will be my prov- 
ince to interpret to them that there may have been 
abundant, and various, and widespread utterances antag- 
onistic to us, and yet that they might not have been the 
voices that represented, after all, the great heart of En- 
gland. \^Hear, hear, and applaiise7\ 

But there is more than that. Rising higher than party 
feeling, endeavoring to stand upon some ground where 
men may be both Christians and philosophers, and looking 
upon the two nations from this higher point of view, one 
may see that it must needs have been as it has been, for it 
so happens that England herself, or Great Britain I should 
say — I mean Great Britain when I say England, always 
\loud cheers\ — Great Britain is herself undergoing a process 
of gradual internal change. \Hear,hear?t^ All living nations 
are undergoing such changes. No nation abides fixed in pol- 
icy and fixed in institutions until it abides in death \J1ea7', 
heai'\\ for death only is immovable in this life, and life is 
a perpetual process of supply. Assimilation, excretion, 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LIVERPOOL. 629 

change, and sensitiveness to the causes of change, are the 
marks of Hfe. \^Applaiise^ And England is undergoing a 
change, and must do so so long as she is vital; and when 
you shall have put that round about England which pre- 
vents further change, you will have put her shroud around 
her. \^Ht'ar, hear, and cheering.^ Now changes cannot be 
brought to pass amongst a free, thinking people as you 
can bring about changes in agriculture or in mechanics, 
or upon dead matter by the operation of natural laws. 
Changes that are wrought by the will of consenting men 
imply hesitation, doubt, difference, debate, antagonisms; 
and change in the final stage before which always has been 
the great conflict, which conflict itself, with all its mischiefs, 
is also a great benefit, since it is a quickener and a life- 
giver; for there is nothing so hateful in life as death; and 
among a people nothing so terrible as dead men that walk 
about and do not know they are dead. \^Laiighter and 
cheersi\ It therefore comes to pass that in the normal 
process of a change such as is taking place in England, 
there will be parties, there will be divided circles, and 
cliques, and all those aspects and phenomena which belong 
to healthy national progress and change for progress. 
But it so came to pass that America too was undergoing 
a change, more pronounced ; and since, contrary to our hope 
and expectation, it was a change that went on under the 
form of revolution and war, in its latter period, it at first 
addressed England only by her senses; for when the re- 
bellion broke out and the tidings rolled across the ocean, 
everybody has said, " England was for you at first." \Hear, 
hear.'\ I believe so: because before men had time to weigh 
in the balances the causes that were at work on our side; 
before the patrician had had time to study, — "What might 
be the influence of this upon my class ? " and the church- 
man, — " What will be the influence of these principles on 
my position?" and the various parties in Great Britain, — 
"What will be the influence of these American ideas, if 
they are in the ascendency, on my side and on my posi- 
tion ? " — before men had time to analyze and to ponder — 
they were for the North and against the South; because, 



630 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

although your anti-slavery feeling is hereditary and legend- 
ary, there was enough vitality in it, however feeble, to 
bring you on to the side of the North in the first instance. 
Much more would it have done, had it been a really liv- 
ing and quickening principle. 

It is said that up to the time of the trouble of the Trent, 
England was with us, but from that time she went rapidly 
over the other way. That was merely the occasion, but 
not the cause. I understand it to have been this — that 
there were a great many men and classes of men in En- 
gland that feared the reactionary influences of American 
ideas upon the internal conflicts of England herself \Jiea}\ 
hea/-]; and a great deal of the offense has arisen, not 
so much from any direct antagonism between Englishmen 
and Americans, as from the feeling of Englishmen that 
the way to defend themselves at home was to fight their 
battle in America [//mr, /leat-] and that therefore there has 
been this strange, this anomalous and ordinarily unex- 
plained cause of the offense and of the difficulties. 

Let us look a little at it. I will not omit to state, in 
passing, that there has been here a great deal of igno- 
rance and of misconception. [Hear, /lear.] But that was 
to be expected. We are not to suppose — it would be 
supreme egotism for an American to suppose — that the 
great mass of the English people should study American 
institutions and American policy and American history as 
they do their own; and when to that natural unknovving- 
ness by one nation of the affairs of another are added the 
unscrupulous and wonderfully active exertions of Southern 
emissaries here, who found men ready to be inoculated, 
and who compassed sea and land to make proselytes and 
then made them tenfold more the children of the devil 
than themselves [ap/>/ai(se], when these men began to prop- 
agate one-sided facts, suppressing — and suppression has 
been as vast a lie in England as falsification [/lear, //ear] — 
perpetually presenting every rumor, every telegram and 
imperfect dispatch from the wrong point of view, and forget- 
ting to correct it w/ien the rest came [//ear, //ear], finding, I say, 
that through emissaries and easy convei'ts, the South has 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LIVERPOOL. 631 

propagated an immense amount of false information 
throughout England, — we are to take this into account. 

But, next, consider the antagonisms which there are sup- 
posed to be between the commercial interests of North 
America and of England. We are two great rivals. Ri- 
valry, gentlemen, is simply in the nature of a pair of scissors 
or shears; you cannot cut with one blade, but if you are 
going to cut well you must have one rubbing against the 
other. \Hea)\ hear, and laieg/itcr.'\ One bookstore cannot 
do as much business in a town as two, because the rivalry 
creates demand. [^Hear, /lear.] Everywhere the great 
want of men is people to buy, and the end of all com- 
merce should be to raise up people enough to take the 
supplies of commerce. [Hear, /tear.] Now, where in any 
street you collect one, five, ten, twenty booksellers or dry 
goods dealers, you attract customers to that point; and so 
far from being adverse to each other's welfare, men clus- 
tering together in rivalry, in the long run and comprehen- 
sively considered, are beneficial to each other. There 
are many men who always reason from their lower facul- 
ties, and refuse to see any questions except selfishly, en- 
viously, jealously. It is so on both sides the sea. [Hear, 
/lear.] Such men will attempt always to foster rivalry and 
make it rancorous. They need to be rebuked by the hon- 
orable men of the commercial world on both sides of the 
ocean, and put in their right place — underfoot. [Aj>J>/ause.'] 
Against all mean jealousies, I say, there is to be a com- 
merce yet on this globe, compared with which all we have 
ever had will be but as the size of the hand compared 
with the cloud that belts the hemisphere. [Applause.] 
There is to be a resurrection of nations; there is to be a 
civilization that shall bring up even that vast populous 
continent of Asia into new forms of life, with new de- 
mands. There is to be a time when liberty shall bless the 
nations of the earth and expand their minds in their own 
homes; when men shall want more and shall buy more. 
There is to be a supply required, that may tax every loom 
and every spindle and every ship that England has or shall 
have when they are multiplied fourfold. [Applaitse.] In- 



632 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Stead therefore of wasting energy, peace, and manhood in 
miserable petty jealousies, trans-Atlantic or cis-Atlantic, 
the business of England, as of America, should be to 
strike those keynotes of liberty, to sound those deep 
chords of human rights, that shall raise the nations of the 
earth and make them better customers because they are 
broader men. \Great cheerini:;?\ 

It has also been supposed that American ideas reacting 
will have a powerful tendency to dissatisfy men with their 
form of government in Great Britain. This is the sincere 
conviction of many. Ladies and gentlemen, England is 
not perfect. England has not yet the best political instru- 
ments any more than we have; but of one thing you may 
be certain, that in a nation which is so conservative, which 
does not trust itself to the natural conservatism of self- 
governing men, but even fortifies itself with conservatism 
by the most potent institutions, and gives those institu- 
tions mainly into the hands of a conservative class, or- 
dained to hold back the impetuosity of the people — do 
you think that any political change can ever take place in 
England until it has gone through such a controversy, 
such a living fight, as shall have proved it worthy to be re- 
ceived ? And will any man tell me that, when a principle 
or a truth has been proved worthy, England will refuse to 
receive it, to give it house-room, and to make any changes 
that may be required for it ? [^Hear, Acar.] If voting ziiva 
voce is best, fifty years hence you will be found voting in 
that manner. If voting by the ballot is best, fifty years 
hence you will have here what we have in America, the 
silent fall of those flakes of paper which come as snow 
comes, soundless, but which gather, as snow gathers on the 
tops of the mountains, to roll with the thunder of the 
avalanche, and crush all beneath it. \^Loud applause?^ But 
it is supposed that it may extend still further. It is sup- 
posed that the spectacle of a great nation that governs it- 
self so cheaply will react in favor of those men in Europe 
who demand that monarchical government shall be con- 
ducted cheaply. \^Hear, /tear.] For men say. Look at the 
civil list — look at the millions of pounds sterling required 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LIVERPOOL. 633 

to conduct our Gov^ernment, and see thirty millions of 
men governed on that vast continent at not one-tenth part 
of the expense. \^Heai\ /icar.l^ Well, I must say that if 
this report comes across the sea, and is true, and these facts 
do excite such thoughts, I do not see how it can be helped. 
[Hear, hear, and laughter. ^ I do not say that our American 
example will react to the essential reconstruction of any 
principles in your edifice. I have not in my own mind 
the belief that it will do more than re-adapt your economy 
to a greater facility and to more beneficence in its applica- 
tion; but that it will ever take the crown from the king's 
head, or change the organization of your aristocracy, I 
have not a thought. [Cheers.] It is no matter what my 
own private opinion on the subject is. Did I live or had I 
been born and bred in England, I have no question that I 
should feel just as you feel, for this I will say: that ia no 
other land that I know of under the sun are a monarchy 
and an aristocracy holding power under it, standing around 
as the bulwark of the throne — in not another land are 
there so many popular benefits accruing under the Gov- 
ernment; and if you must have an aristocracy, where in any 
other land can you point out so many men noble politically, 
but more noble by disposition, by culture, by manliness, 
and true Christian piety ? [Loud and reiterated chee?-ing.] 
I say this neither as the advocate nor as the adversary of 
this particular form of government, but I say it simply 
because there is a latent feeling that American ideas are 
in natural antagonism with aristocracy. They are not. 
American ideas are merely these — that the end of govern- 
ment is the benefit of the governed. [Hear, hear, and 
cheers.] If that idea is inconsistent with your form of gov- 
ernment, how can that form expect to stand ? And if it 
only requires some slight re-adjustment from generation 
to generation, and if that idea is consistent with monarchy 
and aristocracy, why should you fear any change ? 
[Cheers.] I believe that monarchy and aristocracy, as they 
are practically developed in England, are abundantly con- 
sistent with the great doctrine that government is for the 
benefit of the governed. [Hear, hear.] 



634 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

There has also been a feeling that the free church of 
America, while it might perhaps do in a rough-and-tumble 
enterprise in the wilderness, is not the proper form of 
church for Great Britain. Well, you are the judges, gen- 
tlemen, about that, not we; and if it is not the proper form 
for Great Britain, you need not fear that Great Britain 
will take it. If it is, then it is only a question of time; you 
will have to take it. \Cheersi\ For I hold, sturdy as you 
are, strong as your will is, persistent as you may be for 
whatever seems to you to be truth, you will have, first or 
last, to submit to God's truth. YApplause?^ 

When I look into the interior of English thoughts, and 
feelings, and society, and see how in the first stage of our 
conflict with your old anti-slavery sympathies you went for 
the North; how there came a second stage, when you be- 
gan .to fear lest this American struggle should react upon 
your own parties; I think I see my way to the third stage, 
in which you will say, " This American struggle will not 
affect our interior interests and economy more than we 
choose to allow; and our duty is to follow our own real 
original opinions and manly sentiments. \Cheers?[ I know 
of but one or two things that are necessary to expedite 
this final judgment of England, and that is, one or two 
conclusive Federal victories. \^AppIause.\ If I am not 
greatly mistaken, the convictions and opinions of England 
are like iron wedges; but success is the sledge hammer 
which drives in the wedge and splits the log. \Hear, hear, 
attd cheers.l Nowhere in the world are people so apt to 
succeed in what they put their hand to as in England, and 
therefore nowhere in the world more than in England is 
success honored; and the crowning thing for the North, in 
order to complete that returning sympathy and cordial 
good will is to obtain a thorough victory over the South. 
\^Cheers.'\ There is nothing in the way of that but — the 
thing itself. [^Laug/iter and cheers?[ 

Allow me to say, therefore, just at this point and in that 
regard, that, whilst looking at it commercially, and whilst 
looking at it sentimentally, the prolongation of this war 
seems mischievous, it is more in seeming than reality, for 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LIVERPOOL. 635 

the North is itself being educated by this war. The 
North was like men sent to sea on a ship that was but half 
built as yet; just enough built to keep the water out of 
the hull: but they had both to sail on their voyage and to 
build up the ship as they went. We were precipitated into 
this war at a civil crisis in which there were all manner of 
complications at all stages of progress in the right direc- 
tion, and the process of education has had to go on in 
battle-fields, in the drill-camps, and at home amongst the 
people, while they were discussing, and taxing their energies 
for the maintenance of the war. And there never was so 
good a schoolmaster as war has been in America. Terrible 
was the light of his eye, fearful the stroke of his hand; but 
he is turning out as good a set of pupils as ever came from 
any school in this world. Now every single month from 
this time forward that this struggle is delayed unitizes the 
North — brings the North on to that ground which so many 
have struggled to avoid: "Union and peace require the 
utter destruction of slavery." \^Loud cheering^ There is 
an old proverb, " There's luck in leisure." Let me trans- 
mute the proverb, and say, " There is emancipation in de- 
lay." \^Loud cheers^ And every humane heart, yea, every 
commercial man that takes any comprehensive and long- 
sighted instead of a narrow view of the question — will say, 
" Let the war thus linger until it has burnt slavery to the 
very root." S^Rencwed cheers.^ 

While it is, however, a great evil and a terrible one, — I 
will not disguise it, — for war is dreadful to every Christian 
heart, — yet, blessed be God, we are not called to an un- 
mixed evil. There are many collateral advantages. While 
war is as great, or even a greater evil than many of you 
have been taught to think, it is wrong to suppose that it is 
evil only, and that God cannot, even by such servants as 
war, work out a great moral result. The spirit of patriot- 
ism diffused throughout the North has been almost like 
the resurrection of manhood. [C//^^;x] You never can 
understand what emasculation has been caused by the in- 
direct influence of slavery. \^Heai',hearl\ I have mourned 
all my mature life to see men growing up who were 



636 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

obliged to suppress all true conviction and sentiment, be- 
cause it was necessary to compromise between the great 
antagonisms of North and South. There were the few pro- 
nounced anti-slavery men of the North, and the few pro- 
nounced slavery men of the South, and the Union lovers 
(as they were called during the latter period) attempting 
to hold the two together, not by a mild and consistent ad- 
herence to truth plainly spoken, but by suppressing truth 
and conviction, and saying, " Everything for the Union." 
Now during that period I took this ground, that if "Union" 
meant nothing but this — a resignation of the national 
power to be made a tool for the maintenance of slavery — 
Union was a lie and a degradation. \Great cheering^ All 
over New England, and all over the State of New York, 
and through Pennsylvania, to the very banks of the Ohio, 
in the presence of hisses and execrations, I held this doc- 
trine from 1S50 to i860 — namely, " Union is good if it is 
Union for justice and liberty; but if it is Union for slavery, 
then it is thrice accursed." \Loud cheering?^ For they 
were attempting to lasso anti-slavery men by this word 
" Union," and to draw them over to pro-slavery sympathies 
and the party of the South, by saying, " Slavery may be 
wrong and all that, but we must not give up the Union," 
and it became necessary for the friends of liberty to say, 
" Union for the sake of liberty, not Union for the sake of 
slavery." \Cheers^ Now we have passed out of that 
period, and it is astonishing to see how men have come to 
their tongues in the North \Jie.ar, hear, and laughter^ — 
and how men of the highest accomplishments now say 
they do not believe in slavery. If Mr. Everett could 
have pronounced in 1850 the oration which he pronounced 
in i860, then might miracles have flourished again. 
\^Hear, hear?[ Not until the sirocco came, not until that 
great convulsion that threw men as with a backward 
movement of the arm of Omnipotence from the clutches of 
the South and from her sorcerer's breath — not until then 
was it, that with their hundreds and thousands the men of 
the North stood on their feet and were men again. \^G>'^(it 
cheering?^ More than warehouses, more than ships, more 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LIVERPOOL. 637 

than all harvests and every material form of wealth is the 
treasure of a nation in the ma u hood of her men. [Great 
applause^ We could have afforded to have had our stores 
of wheat burnt — there is wheat to plant again. We could 
have afforded to have had our farms burnt — our farms can 
spring again from beneath the ashes. If we had sunk our 
ships — there is timber to build new ones. Had we burnt 
every house — there is stone and brick left for skill again to 
construct them. Perish every material element of wealth, 
but give me the citizen intact: give me the man that fears 
God and therefore loves men, and the destruction of the 
mere outside fabric is nothing — nothing; \cheers\ — but 
give me apartments of gold, and build me palaces along 
the streets as thick as the shops of London; give me rich 
harvests and ships and all the elements of wealth, yet cor- 
rupt the citizen, and I am poor. [^Immeiise cheering, during 
which the audience rose and enthusiastically reiterated the ap- 
plause^ 

I will not insist upon the other elements. I will not 
dwell upon the moral power stored in the names of those 
young heroes that have fallen in this struggle. I cannot 
think of it but my eyes run over. They were dear to me, 
many of them, as if they had carried in their veins my own 
blood. How many families do I know, in which once was 
the voice of gladness, where now father and mother sit child- 
less ! How many heirs of wealth, how many noble scions 
of old families, well cultured, the heirs to every apparent 
prosperity in time to come, flung themselves into their 
country's cause, and died bravely fighting for it. \Cheers^ 
And every such name has become a name of power, and 
whoever hears it hereafter shall feel a thrill in his heart — 
self-devotion, heroic patriotism, love of his kind, love of 
liberty, love of God! \_Rcnetved applause.'] 

I cannot stop to speak of these things; I will turn my- 
self from the past of England and of America to the future. 
It is not a cunningly devised trick of oratory that has led 
me to pray to God and his people that the future of En- 
gland and America shall be an undivided future, and a 
cordially united one. \Hear, and cheers.] I know my friend 



638 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Punch thinks I have been serving out "soothing syrup " to 
the British Lion. \_La lighter?)^ Very properly the picture 
represents me as putting a spoon into the lion's ear instead 
of his mouth; and I don't wonder that the great brute turns 
away so sternly from that plan of feeding. ^Laughter^ If 
it be an offense to have sought to enter your mind by your 
nobler sentiments and nobler faculties, then I am guilty. 
\Hear, hear ^ and cheersi\ \ have sought to appeal to your 
reason and to your moral convictions. I have, of course, 
sought to come in on that side in which you were most 
good-natured. I knew it, and so did you, and I knew that 
you knew it; and I think that any man with common sense 
would have attempted the same thing. I have sacrificed 
nothing, however, for the sake of your favor \cheers\ — and 
if you have permitted me to have any influence with you, 
it was because I stood apparently a man of strong convic- 
tions, but with generous impulses as well. It was because 
you believed that I was honest in my belief, and because I 
was kind in my feelings towards you. [Applause.^ And 
when I go back home I shall be just as faithful with our 
*' young folks " as I have been with the " old folks " in En- 
gland [hear, hear, and cheers] — I shall tell them the same 
things that I have said to their ancestors on this side. I 
shall plead for union, for confidence. [Cheers.] For the 
sake of civilization; for the sake of those glories of the 
Christian Church on earth which are dearer to me than 
all that I know; for the sake of Him whose blood I bear 
about, a perpetual cleansing, a perpetual wine of strength 
and stimulation; for the sake of time and for the glories of 
eternity, I shall plead that mother and daughter — England 
and America — be found one in heart and one in purpose, 
following the bright banner of salvation, as streaming 
abroad in the light of the morning, it goes round and 
round the earth, carrying the prophecy and the fulfillment 
together, that "The earth shall be the Lord's, and that his 
glory shall fill it as the waters fill the sea." [Loud afid pro- 
longed cheering.] 

And now my hours are moments, but I linger because it 
is pleasant. You have made yourselves so kind to me that 



FAREWELL BREAKFAST, LIVERPOOL. 639 

my heart clings to you. I leave not strangers any longer 
— I leave friends behind. [^Loud cheers.^ I shall probably 
never, at my time of life — I am now fifty years of age, and 
at that time men seldom make great changes — I shall prob- 
ably see England no more; but I shall never cease to see 
her. I shall never speak any more here, but I shall never 
cease to be heard in England as long as I live. \^C/ieers.^ 
Three thousand miles is not as v^ide now as your hand. 
The air is one great sounding gallery. What you whisper 
in your closet, is heard in the infinite depths of heaven. 
God has given to the moral power of his church something 
like his own power. What you do in your pulpits in En- 
gland, we hear in America; and what we do in our pulpits, 
you hear and feel here; and so it shall be more and more. 
Across the sea, that is, as it were, but a rivulet, we shall 
stretch out hands of greeting to you, and speak words of 
peace and fraternal love. Let us not fail to hear " Amen " 
and your responsive greeting, whenever we call to you in 
fraternal love for liberty — for religion — for the Church of 
God. Farewell ! 



MR. BEECHER'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE 
SPEECHES IN ENGLAND. 



[Without giving here the whole of the narrative fa short-hand 
report of an account given to friends), the story being suffi- 
ciently told elsewhere, we reproduce only Mr. Beecher's reason 
for speaking at all in England (which he had resolved not to do) 
and his account of the speeches themselves. 

One point to be noticed is the inadequacy of such interpolated 
phrases as " {Interruption^ " in, for instance, the report of the Man- 
chester speech, to represent the uproar and confusion which Mr. 
Beecher describes as having reigned at that place — until he sub- 
dued it. And from that point may be imagined something of the 
mild impossibility of type to express the foaming madness of his 
Liverpool audience. 

He had been through England to the Continent, and now had 
returned. — Ed.] 

I CAME over to England again and was met in London 
by the same gentlemen who had urged me to make ad- 
dresses. I said, " No; I am going home in September. 
I don't want to have anything to do with England." But 
their statement made my resolution give way and changed 
my programme entirely. It was this: " Mr. Beecher, we 
have been counted as the ofT-scouring, because we have 
taken up the part of the North. We have sacrificed our- 
selves in your behalf, and now if you go home and show 
us no favor or help, they will overwhelm us. They will 
say, ' Even your friends in America despise you,' and we 
shall be nowhere, and we think it is rather a hard return. 
Besides," said the}^, "there is a movement on foot that is 
going to be very disastrous, if it is not headed off." To 
my amazement I found that the unvoting English pos- 
sessed great power in England; a great deal more power, 
in fact, than if they had had a vote. The aristocracy and 



ACCOUXT OF THE EXGLISH SPEECHES. 641 

the government felt: "These men know that they have 
no political privileges, and we must administer with the 
strictest regard to their feelings or there will be a revolu- 
tion." And they were all the time under the influence of 
that feeling. Parliament would at any time for three 
years have voted for the South against the North, if it had 
not been for the fear of these common people who did not 
vote. A plan, therefore, was laid to hold great public 
meetings during all that autumn and early winter among 
the laboring masses, to change their feeling, and if that 
atmospheric change could be brought about. Parliament 
would very soon have done what it was afraid to do but 
wanted to do all the time — declare for the Southern Con- 
federacy. The committee said, " If you can lecture for us 
you will head off this whole movement." 

Those considerations were such that I finally yielded. I 
consented at first to speak at Manchester; and very soon 
it was arranged that I was to speak at Liverpool also, and 
out of that grew an arrangement for Glasgow and Edin- 
burgh, and then for London. There was a plan for Bir- 
mingham that failed. 

Dr. John Raymond could not stay and went home, and 
I was left alone; I think I never was so lonesome and 
never suffered so much as I did for the week that I was in 
London before my tour began. I had been making the 
tour of Scotland, and came down to Manchester just one 
or two days in advance of the appointment. The two men 
that met me were Mr. John H. Estcourt and young Watts; 
his father was Sir Something Watts, and had the largest 
business house in Central England. He was a young man 
just recently married, and Estcourt was the very beait ideal 
of a sturdy Englishman, with very few words, but plucky 
enough for a backer against the whole world. They met 
me at the station, and I saw that there was something on 
their minds. Before I had walked with them twenty steps, 
Watts, I think it was, said, " Of course you see there is a 
great deal of excitement here." The streets were all pla- 
carded in blood-red letters,* and my friends were very 
*See pages at the end of this Account. 



642 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

silent and seemed to be looking at me to see if I would 
flinch. I always feel happy when I hear of a storm, and I 
looked at them and said, " Well, are you going to back 
down?" "No," said they, "we didn't know how you 
would feel." " Well," said I, "you'll find out howl am 
going to feel. I'm going to be heard; and if not now I'm 
going to be by and by. I won't leave England until I have 
been heard ! " You never saw two fellows' faces clear off 
so. They looked happy. 

I went to my hotel, and when the day came on which I 
was to make my first speech, I struck out the notes of my, 
speech in the morning; and then came up a kind of hor- 
ror — " I don't know whether I can do anything with an 
English audience — I have never had any experience with 
an English audience. My American ways, which are all 
well enough with Americans, may utterly fail here, and a 
failure in the cause of my country now and here is horri- 
ble beyond conception to me ! " I think I never went 
through such a struggle of darkness and suffering in all 
my life as I did that afternoon. It was about the going 
down of the sun that God brought me to that state in 
which I said, " Thy will be done. I am willing to be an- 
nihilated; I am willing to fail if the Lord wants me to." 
I gave it all up into the hands of God, and rose up in a 
state of peace and of serenity simply unspeakable, and 
when the coach came to take me down to Manchester Hall 
I felt no disturbance nor dreamed of anything but success. 

We reached the hall. The crowd was already beginning 
to be tumultuous, and I recollect thinking to myself as I 
stood there looking at them, " I will control you ! I came 
here for victory, and I will have it, by the help of God ! " 
Well, I was introduced, and I must confess that the things 
that I had done and suffered in my own country, according 
to what the chairman who introduced me said, amazed me. 
The speaker was very English on the subject, and I 
learned that I belonged to an heroic band, and all that sort 
of thing, with abolitionism mixed in, and so on. By the 
way, I think it was there that I was introduced as the Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher Stowe. But as soon as I began to 



ACCOUNT OF THE ENGLISH SPEECHES. 643 

speak the great audience began to show its teeth, and 
I had not gone on fifteen minutes before an unparal- 
leled scene of confusion and interruption occurred. No 
American that has not seen an English mob can form any 
conception of one. I have seen all sorts of camp-meetings 
and experienced all kinds of public speaking on the stump; 
I have seen the most disturbed meetings in New York 
City, and they were all of them as twilight to midnight 
compared with an English hostile audience. For in En- 
gland the meeting does not belong to the parties that call 
it, but to whoever chooses to go, and if they can take it 
out of your hands it is considered fair play. This meeting 
had a very large multitude of men in it who came there 
for the purpose of destroying the meeting and carrying it 
the other way when it came to a vote. 

I took the measure of the audience and said to myself, 
"About one-fourth of this audience are opposed to me, 
and about one-fourth will be rather in sympathy, and my 
business now is not to appeal to that portion that is op- 
posed to me nor to those that are already on my side, but 
to bring over the middle section." How to do this was a 
problem. The question was, who could hold out longest. 
There were five or six storm-centers, boiling and whirling 
at the same time: here some one pounding on a group 
with his umbrella and shouting, "Sit down there;" over 
yonder a row between two or three combatants; some- 
where else a group all yelling together at the top of their 
voice. It was like talking to a storm at sea. But there 
were the newspaper reporters just in front, and I said to 
them, " Now, gentlemen, be kind enough to take down 
what I say. It will be in sections, but I will have it con- 
nected by and by." I threw my notes away, and entered on 
a discussion of the value of freedom as opposed to slavery 
in the manufacturing interest, arguing that freedom every- 
where increases a man's necessities, and what he needs he 
buys, and that it was, therefore, to the interest of the man- 
ufacturing community to stand by the side of labor through 
the country. I never was more self-possessed and never 
in more perfect good temper, and I never was more deter- 



644 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

mined that my hearers should feel the curb before I got 
through with them. The uproar would come in on this 
side and on that, and they would put insulting questions 
and make all sorts of calls to me, and I would wait until 
the noise had subsided, and then get in about five minutes 
of talk. The reporters would get that down and then 
up would come another noise. Occasionally I would see 
things that amused me and would laugh outright, and the 
crowd would stop to see what I was laughing at. Then I 
would sail in again with a sentence or two. A good many 
times the crowd threw up questions which I caught at and 
answered back. I may as well put in here one thing that 
amused me hugely. There were baize doors that opened 
both ways into side-alleys, and there was a huge, burly 
Englishman standing right in front of one of those doors 
and roaring like a bull of Bashan; one of the policemen 
swung his elbow around and hit him in the belly and 
knocked him through the doorway, so that the last part of 
the bawl was outside in the alley-way; it struck me so 
ludicrously to think how the fellow must have looked 
when he found himself "hollering" outside that I could 
not refrain from laughing outright. The audience imme- 
diately stopped its uproars, wondering what I was laugh- 
ing at, and that gave me another chance and I caught it. 
So we kept on for about an hour and a half before they 
got so far calmed down that I could go on peaceably with 
my speech. They liked the pluck. Englishmen like a 
man that can stand on his feet and give and take; and so 
for the last hour I had pretty clear sailing. The next 
morning every great paper in England had the whole 
speech. I think it was the design of the men there to 
break me down on that first speech, by fair means or foul, 
feeling that if they could do that it would be trumpeted 
all over the land. I said to them then and there, " Gen- 
tlemen, you may break me down now, but I have regis- 
tered a vow that I will never return home until I have 
been heard in every county and principal town in the King- 
dom of Great Britain. I am not going to be broken down 
nor put down. I am going to be heard, and my country 



ACCOUXT OF THE ENGLISH SPEECHES. 645 

shall be vindicated." Nobody knows better than I did 
what it is to feel that every interest that touches the heart 
of a Christian man and a patriotic man and a lover of lib- 
erty is being assailed wantonly, to stand between one 
nation and your own and to feel that you are in a situation 
in which your country rises or falls with you. And God 
was behind it all; I felt it and I knew it, and when I got 
through and the vote was called off you would have 
thought it was a tropical thunder-storm that swept through 
that hall as the ayes were thundered, while the noes were 
an insignificant and contemptible minority. It had all 
gone on our side, and such enthusiasm I never saw. I 
think it was there that when I started to go down into the 
rooms below to get an exit, a big, burly Englishman in 
the gallery wanted to shake hands with me, and I could 
not reach him, and he called out, " Shake my umbrella ! " 
and he reached it over; I shook it, and as I did so he 
shouted, " By Jock ! Nobody shall touch that umbrella 
again ! " 

I went next to Glasgow. Glasgow was the headquarters 
of a ship-building interest that was running our blockade. 
I gave liberty for questions everywhere, promising to 
answer any question that should be written and sent up, 
provided it was a proper one. They were to go into the 
hands of the presiding officer of the meeting, who would 
hand them to me and I would answer them. In Glasgow I 
discussed the question of the relation of slavery to working- 
men the world over, carrying along with it the history of slav- 
ery in this country. The interruption at that meeting was 
very bad, but not at all equal to the tumult in Manchester; 
but after they were once stilled you would have thought 
we were in a revival. I demonstrated the unity of labor 
the world around, and discussed the relations of the labor- 
ing man to government and to the aristocratic classes, 
showing the power of wealth, and how slavery had made 
labor disreputable, and how it was their bounden duty to 
make labor honorable everywhere, and how it was a dis- 
grace to them to be building ships to put down the laborers 
of America, and to cast shame and contempt on themselves 



646 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and on every man on earth that earned his living by the 
sweat of his brow. I told them they were driving nails 
into their own coffins. My interruptions lasted about an 
hour there, and the rest of the time was fair weather and 
smooth sailing. The questions that were put to me there 
were the shrewdest of all that I encountered in England. 
They included constitutional questions as well as others. 
There was one question that was very significant and re- 
vealed the difficulties that honest men felt there. 

Q. " You say this war is a war in the interest of lib- 
erty?" A. "Yes." Q. " How, then, is it that your Presi- 
dent, in writing to Mr. Greeley, says that if slavery per- 
mitted will maintain the Union, slavery will continue, and 
if the destruction of slavery is necessary to the maintenance 
of the Union, then it shall be destroyed; the Union is 
what we want?" It threw me upon the necessity of prov- 
ing the honor of the North, and showing its ethical diffi- 
culty in maintaining its Federal obligations under the Con- 
stitution to all the States of the Union, not trespassing upon 
their guaranteed rights and prerogatives, and our moral re- 
lation to freedom and to the workingmen of all the world. 

From there I went to Edinburgh, where I discussed the 
effect upon literature and learning and institutions of 
learning and general intelligence of the presence of slavery, 
on the basis again of the history of slavery in America, 
and the existing state of things. I thought I had seen a 
crowd before I went there, but when I went through the 
lower hall and tried to get into the assembly-room the 
people were wedged in there so tight that you might just 
as well try to find a passage through the wall, and I was 
finally hoisted over their heads and passed on by friendly 
hands and up to the gallery, and down over the front of 
the gallery on to the platform, in order to get to the posi- 
tion where I was to speak. There I had less commotion 
than anywhere else. There was a different audience there; 
there was an educated and moral element in it. 

I went from there to Liverpool. If I supposed I had had 
a stormy time, I found out my mistake when I got there. 
Liverpool was worse than all the rest put together. My life 



ACCOUNT OF THE ENGLISH SPEECHES. 647 

was threatened, and I had had communications to the effect 
that I had better not venture there. The streets were pla- 
carded with the most scurrilous and abusive cards, and I 
brought home some of them and they are in the Brooklyn 
Historical Society now. It so happened, I believe, that the 
Congregational Association of England and Wales was in 
session there, and pretty much all of the members were 
present on the platform. I suppose there were five hundred 
people on the platform behind me. There were men in the 
galleries and boxes who came armed, and some bold men 
on our side went up into those boxes and drew their knives 
and pistols and said to these young bloods, "The first man 
that fires here will rue it." I heard a good many narra- 
tives of that kind afterward, though I knew nothing of it at 
the time. But of all confusions and turmoils and whirls I 
never saw the like. I got control of the meeting in about 
an hour and a half, and then I had a clear road the rest of 
the way. We carried the meeting, but it required a three 
hours' use of my voice at its utmost strength. I sometimes 
felt like a shipmaster attempting to preach on board of a 
ship through a speaking trumpet with a tornado on the sea 
and a mutiny among the men. By this time my voice was 
pretty much all used up, and I had yet got to go to Exeter 
Hall in London. 

I went down to London, and by this time all London 
and all the clubs had seen my speeches, four of which had 
been fully reported. It is said that a man who has made 
the conversation of a club over night and had a report of 
one speech in the London Times is famous. I had had four 
speeches, occupying three or five columns each, reported, 
and had been incessantly talked about in the clubs. So I 
was famous. When I first went to London I stopped at 
the "Golden Cross," and they put me in a little back room 
right under the rafters. When I came back from the Con- 
tinent there had been considerable said, and they received 
me much more politely at the "Golden Cross," and put me 
in a third-story front room. On the third visit I was re- 
ceived by the landlord and his servants in white aprons, 
and was bowed in and put in the second story, and had a 



648 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

front parlor and bedroom and everything beautiful. As 
the cards came in and gentlemen of distinction called, I 
grew in the eyes of the servants every moment. " But 
Naaman was a leper, though he stood the highest in his 
master's favor." I had had a successful career under diffi- 
culties, but had talked and strained my voice so much, that 
when I went to bed the night before the day I was to 
speak, I could not be heard aloud, and here I had come to 
London to close my course by speaking on the moral aspect 
of the question, and appealing to the religious feeling of 
the English people. It was the climax — and my voice was 
gone I I said, " Lord, Thou knowest this. Let it be as 
Thou wilt." The next morning I woke up in bed, and as 
soon as I came to myself fairly, and thought about my 
voice, I didn't dare to speak for fear I should find I could 
not; but by and by I sort of spoke, and then I would not 
say another word for fear I should lose it. Otherwise I 
was well and strong; but the huskiness of my voice was 
such that when I did speak there was no elasticity. There 
seemed to be one little rift that I spoke through, and if I 
went above or below it I broke. Then came to me Dr. 
Waddington and Brother Tompkins, most excellent and 
devout men they were, and very faithful to our cause. 
They called on me, and seeing that I was in bonds they 
cheered me and said, " No matter, you have done your 
work. What you have already done is sufficient, so it is 
no matter, if you only make your appearance and bow." 
They prayed with me and it lifted me right out of my 
despondency. 

So I plucked up courage and went to the hall that even- 
ing, and the streets of London were crowded. I could not 
get near the hall except by the aid of a policeman. And 
when I got around to the back door, I felt a woman throw 
her arms around me — I saw they were the arms of a 
woman, and that she had me in her arms — and when I 
went through the door she got through, too, and on turning 
around I found it was one of the members of my church. 
She had married and gone to London, and she was deter- 
mined to hear that speech, and so took this way to accom- 



ACCOUNT OF THE ENGLISH SPEECHES. 649 

plish an apparently impossible task. She grasped and held 
me until I had got her in. I suppose that is the way a great 
many sinners get into heaven finally. Well, I had less 
trouble and less tumult in London than anywhere else. 
The battle had been fought, and m^y address there was a 
good deal more of a religious address than anywhere else, 
though I discussed in all these places very thoroughly the 
whole subject of slavery. But the way was broken and 
the storm had passed away, and the cause was triumphant. 
That which I had had in mind was effected. The idea of 
now raising lecturers, under Spence & Co., to go through 
England and turn the common people away from the 
North and toward the South was now abandoned. The 
enthusiasm of the whole country ran strongly in the other 
direction. And here let me say that everywhere the 
weavers, the laborers, that were by the famine of cotton 
thrown out of employment and into the greatest distress, 
were staunch and true to the right instincts of the labor- 
ing man. They never flinched, and our cause was success- 
ful in England by reason of the fidelity of the great, 
working, common people of England. 

Then came a series of breakfasts. They were all given 
by friendly men, and by men who were really in earnest to 
know all about the facts of the case. I had to discuss 
the questions of taxation, the issue of such an enormous 
quantity of greenbacks, and the ability and the willingness 
of our people to pay; and I had to go into finance a good 
deal, and what little knowledge I had came wonderfully 
handy. When you stand up at a breakfast-table and are 
questioned by shrewd men who do understand these things, 
the intellectual ordeal is much severer than the physical 
exhaustion in the night speeches. There were five of 
these breakfasts in all; by the time I was through I was 
very glad of it. It was now coming on toward November. 
They wanted to publish the speeches I had made, and I 
went down to Liverpool to Charley Duncan's house, and 
the proof sheets were sent to me there, and I worked on 
them to get them ready until about the middle of Novem- 
ber, I think, and then I took ship for home. 



650 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Now, as there was no telegraph under the sea, and there 
had been no time for me to hear anything about my 
speeches, and as I never had been treated with very great 
luxury at home in the debates on slavery and the war, 
but had been set upon in the public press, I hadn't the 
slightest idea what the result of my labors in England 
would be. I had the consciousness that I had not reserved 
one single faculty nor one single particle of strength there. 
I had worked for my country, God himself being witness, 
with the concentrated essence of my very being. I ex- 
pected to die. I did not believe I should get through it. 
I thought at times I should certainly break a blood-vessel 
or have apoplexy. I did not care. I was as willing to die 
as ever I was when hungry or thirsty to take refreshment, 
if I might die for my country. Nobody knows what his 
country is until he is an exile from it and sees it in peril 
and obloquy. I was sick all the way home. My passage 
was seventeen days from Liverpool to New York. It was 
fifteen days to Halifax, and during that time I was never 
off my back after leaving Queenstown until we entered 
the Halifax Bay. It was then nine or ten o'clock at night, 
and I was up on deck as soon as we got into smooth water, 
and was walking the deck when a man met me and said, 
"Is this Mr. Beecher?" I started and said, "Yes." Said 
he, " I have a telegram from your wife." It seemed like a 
vision — that I had got where a telegram would reach me. 
I had touched American shores ! You cannot imagine the 
ecstasy of the feeling. The telegram of my wife simply 
announced that she would come to meet me at New York. 
The ship in which I came over was the Asia. She was 
loaded down to her gunwales with warlike stores and con- 
traband goods that were to go to Bermuda, and was full 
of the bitterest of Southern men and partisans. It made 
no difference to me, because I was on my back in my cabin 
and cared nothing about it. 

From there to Boston was a pleasant trip — the only two 
days I was ever on the sea when I was not sea-sick. We 
were off Boston Harbor about seven in the evening, but 
the tide was not right, and we did not get in till about 



ACCOUNT OF THE ENGLISH SPEECHES. 651 

twelve o'clock. We reached our landing, but could not 
get into our slip until the next morning. I was on deck. 
I could not sleep. I saw the lights all over Boston, and 
there came again at midnight a man who turned out to be 
a Custom House officer. After watching me he said, " Is 
this Mr. Beecher ? " " Yes." " Well, we are very glad to 
see you home safely. Some of your friends in Boston 
wrote down to us telling us what we were to do; as if we 
didn't know how to treat a gentleman decently ! It is a 
pity she has come in Saturday night. To-morrow is Sun- 
day." " Why ?" said I. " Because, if you had come in on 
a week day we were ready to give you a reception that 
would make things hum." That was the first I had heard 
— I did not know whether the papers were down on me or 
not. I felt ashamed to ask him further; but I said I had 
not heard anything from home, and was not aware how 
the news of my labors abroad had been received by my 
countrymen. "Well," said he, "you'll find out." So with 
that assurance he chalked my baggage and got me on 
shore. I got into a hack and drave to the Parker House 
about four o'clock Sunday morning. I asked the clerk if 
I could have a room. "No," said he, "we are full." "I 
suppose I can have a bed in one of the parlors, can't I ? " 
said I. "No," said he, "all the parlors are full." "Can't 
I bunk on the floor anywhere ?" " No," again, " all full." 
He asked me my name, and when I told him he said, 
"Why, there's a room here ior youT Said I, " I think not, 
I just came from England." "There is," said he. "All 
right," said I, " let me have a lamp. I won't dispute you. 
If any one gets in after I do I shall think he is a smart fel- 
low." I found out that the passengers' names were tele- 
graphed from Halifax to Boston to Mr. Parker, who is a 
friend of mine, and he had said, " Mr. Beecher will be around 
in about so many days and will want a room," and he had 
set it apart for me. About eight o'clock in the morning, 
Bang! came on my door. I said, "What do you want?" 
It was a committee who had come to see if I would lecture' 
before a social club. I got rid of them, and arrived home 
at last safe and sound. 



SOME OF THE POSTERS FROM THE WALLS OF ENGLISH CITIES, 1863. 

Liverpool Poster ; size, 20x30 inches. 
REV. 

H. W. BEECHBR 

AT 

THE PHILHARMONIC HALL 

THE TRENT AFFAIR. 

[Rev. H. \V. Beecher in the A'eiv York Independent^ 
" Should the President quietly yield to the present necessity (viz. : the 
delivering up of Messrs. Mason and Slidell) as the lesser of two evils and 
bide our time with England, there will be a sense of wrong, of national 
humiliation so profound, and a horror of the unfeeling selfishness of the 
English Government, iir the great emergency of our affairs, such as will 
inevitably by and by break out in flames, and will only be extinguished by 
a deluge of blood! We are not living the whole of our life to-day. There 
is a future to the United States in which the nation will right any injustice 
of the present hour." 

The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, at a meeting held in New York at a time 
when the Confederate Envoys, Messrs. Slidell and Mason, had been sur- 
rendered bv President Lincoln to the English Government, from whose 
vessel (the Royal Mail Steamer Trent ) they were taken, said — 

"That the best blood of England must flow for the outrage England had 
perpetrated on America." 

THIS IS THE NIAN 

Who Proposes to address the People of Liverpool 

AT THE PHILHARMONIC HALL, 
ON KRIDA.Y EVENING, OCTOBER letli. 

Let Englishmen see that he gets 

THE WELCOME HE DESERVES. 



Liverpool Poster ; size, 20x30 inches. 



TO THE 

INDEPENDENT AND INDUSTRIAL CLASSES 

OK LIVERFOOL. 

An individual of the name of Henry Ward Beecher, who, when at home, 
Brooklyn, New York, is called a Baptist minister, has come over to this 
country as a political emissarv from Abraham Lincoln to stir up strife and 
ill-will among you. and for that purpose will hold a meeting at the Philhar- 
monic Hall, Hoi^e Street, this evening. This same Henry Ward Beecher 
it was who recommended London to be sacked and this town destroyed, 
and this godly man, bear in mind, is a preacher of the Gospel and good- 
will towards all men. As there will be an amendment proposed at the 
meeting, you must attend and show by vour hearts and hands that the in- 
dustrious classes in this town are opposed to the bloody War which Abra- 
ham Lincoln is now waging against his brother in the South, and the das- 
tardly means he is resorting to in employing such tools as Henry Ward 
Beecher, a minister of the Gospel. 

Friday, i6th October, 1863. 



SOME OF THE POSTERS FROM THE WALLS OF ENGLISH CITIES, 1863. 

Manchester Poster ; size, 20x29 inches. 
THE 

WAR CHRISTIANS! 

THEIR DOCTRINES. 

At a Jubilee Demonstration in New York, in January last, 
REV. JOHN J. RAYMOND, 
The appointed Chaplain of the meeting, in his opening prayer, said : " We 
thank thee, O God, that thou hast seen fit to raise up one, ABRAHAM, 
surnamed Lincoln. . . . He is a man whom GOD SHOULD bless, 
and the people delight to honor." 

UNITED STATES SENATOR LANE, 

In his Address to the Great Union Meeting at Washington, said: " I would 
like to live long enough to see every white man now in SoulhCaroIinainHeJl." 

REV. H. WARD BEECHER, 
In his Address in Glasgow, last Monday, said: "They (alluding to the 
NORTH) rose like ONE MAN, and with a voice that reverberated 
throughout the whole world, cried — LET IT (alluding to the South), with 
all its attendant horrors, GO TO HELL." 

Erom the Manchester Giiai-dimt^s Correspondence : 
Is this the same Reverend Mr. Beecher, who, at a meeting in America, 
during the discussion of the "Trent Affair," said : "That the best blood of 
England must flow as atonement for the outrage England committed on 
America " } 

Manchester Poster; size, 25x38 inches. 

WHO IS 

Hy. Ward Beecher.^ 

He is the man who said the best blood of England must be shed to 
atone for the Trent affair. 

He is the man who advocates a War of Extermination with the South, — 
says it is incapable of " re-generation," but proposes to re-people it from 
the North by "generation." — See "Times." 

He is the friend of that inhuman monster. General BUTLER. He is 
the friend of that so-called Gospel Preacher, CHEEVER, who said in one 
of his sermons — " Fight against the South till Hell Freezes, and then con- 
tinue the battle on the ice." 

He is the friend and supporter of a most debased Female, who uttered 
at a public meeting in America the most indecent and cruel language that 
ever polluted female lips — See "Times." 

MEN OF MANCHESTER, ENGLISHMEN! 

What reception can you give this wretch, save unmitigated disgust and 
contempt.' His impudence in coming here is only equaled by his cruelty 
and impiety. Should he, however, venture to appear, it behooves all right- 
minded men to render as futile as the first this second attempt to get up a 
public demonstration in favor of the North, which is now waging War 
against the South with a vindictive and revengeful cruelty unparalleled in 
the history of any Christian land. 

Cave & Senn, Printers by Steam Power, Palatine Building, Manchester. 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 



Mr. Beecher was formally welcomed home from his English 
trip by his fellow citizens in Brooklyn on the evening of Novem- 
ber 19, 1863, in the Academy of Music, which was crowded, 
though the admission fee (for the benefit of the Sanitary Com- 
mission) was one dollar. 

At eight o'clock Mr. Beecher was escorted upon the stage by a 
large number of the well known men of the city, and was received 
with the warmest manifestations of applause. 

Mr. A. A. Low introduced the Rev. Dr. R. S. Storrs as the presid- 
ing officer of the meeting, and that gentleman briefly but feel- 
ingly welcomed Mr. Beecher to his home. When he took his 
hand in behalf of the two thousand people who were gathered to 
greet him, the whole audience rose, and for several minutes made 
the house resound with their cheers and plaudits. When the ap- 
plause had subsided, Mr. Beecher said : — 

I WILL not attempt to disguise the deep feeling with 
which your generous kindness, expressed in the words of 
my brother, affect me. I am the more touched and more 
stirred by this sympathy than by all I have seen, and by 
all I have experienced in the whole of my travel abroad, 
and I speak the simple truth which has a witness in your 
hearts, that it is here in this city more than anywhere 
else that I desire to be so greeted, for, as when I was in 
England it was my pride to be an American, so when I am 
in America it is my pride to be a citizen of Brooklyn, and 
I accept your generous confidence and this affecting testi- 
monial of it, in so far as it relates to me personally, with 
profound sensibility, and with deep gratitude. I thank 
you. 

And yet I should be vain if I supposed that this was 
meant for me simply. I am myself the effect of American 
institutions; I am made by them; and if I have done any 
service to the public worthy of your regard, I owe to this 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 655 

very American public and the institutions which enrich 
it, the power to do it any service; and I am glad that it is 
so, so deep are my feelings of patriotism, so profoundly 
am I impressed with the grandeur of this latest and ripest 
development of civil life. I am more than willing to be 
sunk myself, if my decadence and disappearance would 
add anything to the glory of my country; I would fain be 
the oil of the lamp, that gives its life that the light may 
be bright which consumes it. This is my feeling and it is 
your feeling, and I know I bear your sympathy with me 
in this simple and artless expression of my feelings. I am 
glad you asked me to be present to-night; and I am proud 
that, when I came back to America, having witnessed as I 
could in Europe for the truth of our cause, the first place 
to greet me was my own home, where I am best known. 
That is indeed a wreath which I shall wear, none the less 
because it is invisible. 

I went abroad, as you know, as a private citizen. It was 
tauntingly asked me on my arrival in England why, in the 
very height and paroxysm of our national agony, did I 
abandon the field to go to Europe. I did not answer; but 
now I do answer. I foresaw that the autumn and winter 
would require labors even greater than any period previous; 
and while the excitements and the excessive labors of the 
two and a half or three years preceding had not destroyed 
my health nor undermined my constitution, yet certainly I 
was jaded, and I feared to go into the autumn and winter, 
which require the best powers of every man, without my 
full strength; and since I had nothing to do in the sum- 
mer, which was the time for arms — not speech — I took that 
opportunity, upon the generous invitation of my own peo- 
ple, and went abroad to rest: and I am come back to labor 
more assiduously. And allow me to say, this generosity of 
my own people was a comfort to me everywhere, and in 
my pride — not because I disesteemed English kindness, 
not because I undervalued their hospitality, but because 
I cherished with gratitude and pride the home bounty 
— I refused to receive their hospitality or in the remotest 
degree compensation in any form. I said to them, My 



656 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

own people sent me abroad, and it is their pleasure that I 
shall stand upon them for my support, and I will not take 
one penny from the hand of an Englishman. You will 
not misunderstand me — it was not because I disdained 
their kindness, but because I valued yours. 

It was also said that I had come abroad, sent by our Gov- 
ernment. That would have spoiled it all. I had no official 
character, and would not have had one. I went simply as 
a private citizen — merely and only as an American citizen; 
and when, unsought, and, indeed, against my feelings if not 
my judgment, I entered upon the labor of the last few weeks 
of my sojourn in England, I assumed the responsibility, 
I cannot say with trembling — for I am not accustomed 
much to tremble — but with the gravest sense of what it 
was. I have felt the inspiration of nationality often, but 
I never before was placed between two such great peoples, 
when I saw them both in perspective, both in their present 
relations and in their future, and I never before felt so 
much as I felt all the time, waking or dreaming, night or 
day, what it was to stand to plead for the unity of these 
two great Christian nations for the sake of struggling 
mankind; it was at once an incitement to me and a great 
support. 

But, after all, I did not know how my countrymen would 
regard my efforts. If you had yourselves disapproved, I 
should have been sorry that you disapproved, but not sorry 
for what I had done. I did the best I knew how to do, 
every time, everywhere, disinterestedly, for the love I bore 
to the cause and to the principles that underlie it. But I 
had no word, and could not have, from home. Whether 
my representations of policy, and fact, and history, and of 
the tendency of things would accord with yours or not^ 
whether I should be caught up in the whirl of conflict of 
party and my reasons traversed and my facts contradicted, I 
knew nothing about this until I landed in Boston, or rather, 
until I was in the harbor — not one whisper; and then I 
learned, for the first time, that my services had been ac- 
cepted by my countrymen. And to-night I greet you, a 
citizen returned among his friends, profoundly thankful 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 657 

that the labor and the service which I attempted for the 
public good has the seal of their approbation. 

It is my purpose not to trespass further upon your time 
upon matters personal to myself — I know that you will 
not thank me even for what I have said. I desire now this 
evening to speak upon that which you have all come to 
hear, namely, my impressions and experience in respect 
to the condition of things in Great Britain as they relate 
to this struggle in this country. 

Among the wise things said by that wisest of modern po- 
litical writers, De Tocqueville, is this, that it is impossible 
to judge of the affairs of one country by applying to them 
the experiences and the rules of another one. There are 
many reasons why one would have presumed beforehand 
that it was easy for us to understand British feeling and 
British policy; there was a similarity of institutions, and 
a sameness of radical principles. But that very similarity, 
since it begets by different institutions and vehicles differ- 
ent policies, in the end is likely to deceive us, and we are 
liable to leap too quickly to conclusions, because upon the 
face things look like those to which we are accustomed at 
home. I myself have experienced that. If I had judged 
of the condition of England from the impressions produced 
upon me by my first four weeks' tarry there in the early 
summer, I should have judged very wrongly, — as measured 
by my present convictions. Nor do I feel myself adequate 
even now to analyze and state with confidence either the 
causes or the results of the English feeling. I am quite 
aware that I am imperfect in my views in many directions. 
Nor can I presume even to say that I present to you opin- 
ions. My nature gives intensity to my expressions; and 
yet I wish beforehand to ask you to consider that the state- 
ments I make are impressions — impressions liable to mis- 
take, subject to corrections that may afterward be made in 
them. With these preliminary remarks, I will tell you 
what I saw and found. 

You are aware that the original expectation of our peo- 
ple was almost universally that in Great Britain we should 
find a sympathizer ready and prepared. One thing we 



658 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

counted sure, and that was, if all the other nations of the 
world stood aloof, there was one that would stand by us 
in the hour of our trial, and that was Great Britain. And 
the sharpness of our retaliatory complaints was stimulated 
by that very disappointment of an over-confident convic- 
tion. When I was asked in Great Britain why the Amer- 
ican press so severely inveighed against England, and was 
almost silent in respect to France, I said to them, Because 
we, in our deepest hearts, care for England, and not much 
for France; because under anger, lower down than preju- 
dice, when you strike the deeper feelings of Americans, 
no doubt they have an English origin, and they are proud 
of their history when it gets back further than the present 
generation. And it was this growing affection and sym- 
pathy in the best natures, and in the best part of the best 
natures — it was this that made the disappointment of pub- 
lic expectation so sharp and so hard to be borne when 
Great Britain failed our expectations and gave us no sym- 
pathy. We never asked for help. We never asked that 
nation to lend us anything or stretch out so much as the 
little finger of her right hand. We did ask, simply a gen- 
erous confidence, a generous moral sympathy. That was 
all; but that we did not get, and we felt it sharply. The 
conduct of England, and the expression of their public 
feeling had the effect of throwing her moral weight against 
the North and for the South. So I told them. I carefully 
discriminated between the intention and the result. What 
men intend has much to do in judging of their moral char- 
acter; but what men do does not always depend upon their 
intentions. When, therefore, the British people disclaimed 
sympathy with the South, or the disposition to go against 
their own principles as represented by the North, I said to 
them, "What your intentions are you can best judge; but 
what the effect of your attitude is, we upon the other side 
can best judge: and we know that the moral influence of 
Great Britain has substantially gone for more than two 
years to help the rebellion of the slavocracy of the South, 
and to hinder the progress of free institutions in the North. 
If there is rescue and relief, if there is redemption and 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 659 

victor}^, Great Britain must stand aside, and it must be 
said, The nation tliat boasted of her free institutions and 
her sovereign sympathy with the welfare of the common 
people, has had no part or lot in this great work. 

The denial of moral sympathy in Great Britain was ac- 
companied by the most active exertions of certain parts 
of the British people in behalf of the South; so much so, 
that I think it will scarcely be doubted by any man that if 
the ship-yards, the foundries, the looms, and the shops of 
Great Britain, had refused their succor to rebellion, the 
rebellion would have died out in the nation long ago. And 
I said in private, what it did not seem altogether judicious 
to say in public then, that in some sense I might bring this 
war and lay it at the feet of the British people, and say, 
" Not that you intended it, but the course of conduct you 
pursued, legal or illegal, was such that but for you the 
rebellion would have perished almost in the beginning of 
it; no man but knows that." There was also the extraor- 
dinary spectacle in England of men who, from sheer hatred 
of war, by misjudgment and mistake, were left to foment 
it. With unfeigned horror of slavery, a large party of 
theirs were contributing directly in the interests of slavery. 
There never was a misposition more signal than that of 
the British public, as represented in their leading intelli- 
gent classes, in this conflict. There never was a case 
where a nation, by its upper classes, went so unquestion- 
ably in favor of an evil, at the same time that they occu- 
pied themselves in the intensest denunciation of that evil. 
They went against free society at the very time that they 
were proudly praising free society, and arrogating to them- 
selves its highest honors. 

Under such circumstances we were drifting, you recol- 
lect, right toward an international war. I told the British 
people that war was not our choice; and yet, terrible and 
cruel as it was, there was something in this struggle so 
dear to us, and so indispensable to national life, that rather 
than that there should be separation — rather than that 
there should be disruption, and dismemberment — rather 
than that we should fail in this republic, and free govern- 



66o PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ment should fail, we would stand war with Great Britain 
and France, or with Europe. It would have been difficult 
to say this without the appearance of threat; but that dif- 
ficulty was solved for me by the iterated and reiterated 
charges brought against me of having been bellicose in 
my own country, and having threatened all manner of 
desolation to Great Britain; and my reply was this, that I 
felt part, and a full part in proportion, of that deep indig- 
nation which my own people felt against Great Britain; 
that I had never desired war, but abhorred it; that I 
thought the great principles of free, republican govern- 
ment to be so precious that we would not give them up, 
not even at the threat, or at the infliction of war, no mat- 
ter who brought it upon us. 

This, then, being the cruel disappointment which we ex- 
perienced in our expectations of sympathy from Great 
Britain, you will ask me, What did you find to be the facts 
and the condition of things? I found, in the first place, 
upon going there, that every man that I met was a South- 
ern man; not literally born in the South, but this is the 
division they have themselves made, and these are the 
terms applied. They are Southerners or Northerners, even 
more than we are here. I found that on the railways, on 
the boats, in the hotels, wherever there was a traveling 
public, there was a public that sympathized with the South 
and was adverse to the North. It was not an uncommon 
thing to hear gentlemen talk freely and kindly with me 
upon other matters, saying, as the news was discussed, 
" Bad news we have got by the last steamer." " What is 
the news?" I asked, a little troubled. "I understand 
Meade has driven Lee entirely out of Pennsylvania." 
"God send us much more bad news then!" said I. Com- 
ing from communities enthusiastic and almost homo- 
geneous in their feelings upon this subject, at least, it was 
strange to my ear to hear well-dressed and well-bred men, 
of ordinary intelligence, congratulate themselves upon the 
disasters of the North, and rejoice in the successes of the 
South. But such was the case. Nor will there return to 
your city one young man that has been traveling who will 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 66 1 

not bring back substantially this account, that wherever 
he went almost every man that he met, with scarcely an 
exception, was against the North and in favor of the 
South. You will well imagine the impression made under 
such circumstances. A man's first impression would be: 
There is no question about this matter; these old English 
people, this old British nation, are all against us; go where 
you will, up or down, you will find it all the same. That 
was the effect produced upon my mind. 

Upon still further inquiry I was disappointed to find that 
those I supposed I should have a right to lean upon were 
not to be leaned upon — I mean the body of Dissenting 
Christians. That denomination to which I myself belong, 
the Congregationalist, known in England as Independents, 
I had supposed, since they were sending out their testi- 
mony for freedom, would have been arrayed almost inva- 
riably on the side of the people struggling to sustain their 
liberties. I had supposed I should find them right. I did 
not. I do not mean that there is not a very large part of 
that body that perhaps are right; for they will be included 
under a head which I shall mention by and by; but I am 
sorry to say that I did not find an influential and leading 
clergyman of that denomination, nor an influential and 
leading layman on our side. They said that they sympa- 
thized with liberty. Yes, they sympathized with liberty 
exactly as an icicle sympathizes with sunlight in summer; 
it chills you to go near it. And I said to them. We want no 
such frigid sympathy; we want nothing if it cannot come 
from more glowing, from more enthusiastic hearts, than 
this. It does us no good, and we don't want it. 

I found also the most profound ignorance of our affairs 
and all the provisions of our institutions, and that, too, in 
quarters where I had a right to expect more intelligence. 
I found the most active and unscrupulous efforts made by 
Southern men to stir up animosity and war. And let me 
say, a bad cause was better served than a good one there, 
as to some extent it has been in our own land. I am sure 
that the South, for a bad cause, has more nearly put forth 
its entire strength here than we for a good cause. So 



662 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

abroad; where we send one man to England to influence 
public opinion, they send a score. Where we print one 
book of information, they a library. Where we touch one 
spring, they a hundred. They seemed to pervade England, 
and they seemed, with the unerring instinct of selfishness 
and despotism, to know just where to undermine the 
generous and better feelings, just where to invite the cloud 
of ignorance, just where to touch a man so that principle 
should fall and profit take its place. 

You will then imagine the surprise and skepticism with 
which I received the assurances of the friends who were on 
our side that the great heart of the British nation was on 
our side. I had found nobody except the confidential 
friends of emancipation, in whose society I was thrown, — 
almost nobody, — that spoke kindly of us, or that seemed 
to be in sympathy with us; and yet my ears rung with the 
assurance, day and night, " You are mistaken — mistaken; 
this great English people are sound at heart." And I said: 
"Where under heaven do the English people keep their 
hearts? " So that if I had spoken in my early visit to En- 
gland in June, I could not have spoken as I now do or 
shall. Neither on my first return from the Continent in 
September, could I have understood and felt what I un- 
derstand now. In some measure, I entirely believe that 
they were right, and that, after all, the great heart of the 
British nation is with us at the North. Let me take up 
then one part of society after another, and state what I 
understood to be the facts. 

First, there is the great commercial class of England; 
those that are making money, and those that have made it. 
If you please, call them the Plutocracy — they are against us. 
Then, in the same general grade, there is a large class of 
men that are actively employed in supplying the South 
with all its necessities — except principle — and they are 
making, or suppose that they are making, large fortunes. 
We cannot doubt which side they take. The next is a very 
large class of men who, for precisely the opposite reason, 
somehow are opposed to the North and in favor of the 
South; namely, those that have been accustomed to make 



« RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 663 

money and find that the interrupting war has stopped their 
profits— the men that want to make money and don't. 
They are opposed to us. Between those two classes lies 
the great intermediate one, of men that are bewildered 
and perplexed, and they see that business is more or less 
affected — as it is — over the whole of Europe from its sympa- 
thetic relations with this continent; and they say, " Let this 
war end ;" and as the offensive war is now from the Northern 
side they feel that whenever the North will stop aggressing 
upon the South, the war will stop: and so they are against 
us. And it may be laid down that while there are very 
noble exceptions here and there through England, men 
that stand out against their class and above it, yet, speaking 
comprehensively, the commercial classes are against the 
North and in favor of the South. 

I have spoken of the religious people. It is very difficult 
for me to analyze the causes that have on the whole turned 
both the Establishment and the Dissenters against us, in 
respect of most of their influential men. The influential lay- 
men, and most of the influential clergymen, I am informed, 
are as a body against us. The ground usually taken is, 
that the North is not sincere; and, secondly, that war is a 
great sin. Nowhere else in the world is there so tender a 
conscience on the subject of war as England has — when 
she is not waging it. She has only three wars, I believe, 
now on hand — in Japan, China, and New Zealand, Aus- 
tralia, or somewhere — and the rest of her leisure she occu- 
pies with a profound regret at war. If it was for a ship 
on the sea, she was ready to go to war with us; if it was 
for a territory on the Antarctic Ocean, she was ready to go 
to war with the savages; if to open trade, she had no ob- 
jection to burn down a town of a hundred thousand inhab- 
itants: but when a people are making war for their own life, 
for everything that dignifies humanity, England stands 
wondering at God's patience for men that will make war. 
I am sorry to say that aside from the friends who have al- 
ways maintained and given their countrymen a consistent 
testimony against war, those men who were most querulous 
against our war were men who had no particular objection 



664 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

to the Crimean war, the opium war, and wars if not al- 
ready on their hands, at least on the tips of their fingers; 
and I told them at Exeter Hall that there was not a land 
on the globe against which they had not dashed their 
prows, and that their flag was a symbol of it — a cross on a 
field of blood. 

The English nobility as a class are against us. I shall read 
you some noble exceptions, but as a class they are against 
us, and for the most obvious reasons. We are not accus- 
tomed to estimate the effect of our example upon Euro- 
pean institutions. When he takes his walk abroad, it is 
not the elephant that weighs and measures his own gravity 
as he treads on the field-mouse's tail. It is the mouse that 
meditates. And for such a gigantic nation as this, on such 
a continent as this, while we are treading the steps of ac- 
complishing history, we do not feel the jar we ourselves 
make; but those that have thrones and aristocratic priv- 
ileges do, and they are the best interpreters of the reaction- 
ary influences of American ideas and American institutions. 
It was The Saturday Revieiv, that scholarly, keen, brilliant, 
unprincipled paper of England, that had the frankness to 
say that the Americans must not think their remarks were 
because they disliked us, but because they found our ideas 
and our examples working in Great Britain; and they were 
obliged, in order to defeat those ideas in England, to at- 
tack us in America. They are fighting their own home 
battles — for they have an unerring instinct. They have 
this feeling: if Government be so efficient on such a 
continent, and so ludicrously cheap, how can we maintain 
so expensive and complicated a Government on our side ? 
And, lest they should not think of it themselves, millions 
of the common people there, who were being taxed, per- 
petually suggested it to them. Do you know that the 
effect of our Revolution was to send revolution all through 
Europe ? Being prepared, it was the torch of our Revolu- 
tionary War that set fire to that train which burned all 
over Europe, and they do not forget it. Such prosperity, 
such power, and at so little expense, and with so few mo- 
nopolies and prerogatives to the favored classes! And, 



RECEPTION EV BROOKEYN. 665 

therefore, when they oppose us, it is not to be construed 
as wanton opposition; it is nothing but a manifestation of 
self-love; and if you had been born with a coronet on your 
head, you would have been just so. In Parliament, I sup- 
pose, if a vote could be taken to-day, in accordance with 
the private wishes of the members, they would be five to 
one against the North. It is believed that the Government 
have been entirely in favor of a rupture with the North, 
and had they dared they would have brought it about. It 
is the impression, however, that the Sovereign of Great 
Britain has been from the first our judicious and unflinching 
friend. It is believed, and was so represented to me, that 
the never rightly-estimated and lamented Prince Consort 
was our fast friend, and that among the last acts of his life 
were those which erased from documents presented to him 
sentences and sentiments that would have inflamed the 
growing anger. He died with the blessing upon his head, 
" Blessed are the peacemakers." And although in the 
British Government as at present constituted I shall read 
you the names of several that are known to be warm and 
disinterested in their regard, yet there are others in the 
Government that, it is well understood, would not hesitate 
to plunge England into a war for the sake of disrupting 
this nation. 

If you ask me, then, what is the great underlying influ- 
ence that has been at work among the upper classes in 
England, I answer in these words: First, commercial inter- 
est, and rivalry therein; secondly, class power, and the fear 
of the contagion of American ideas; and thirdly — I know 
not how I shall say it so that it shall be least offensive to 
our friends on the other side, but you have not come to 
the bottom of the ideas of our friends in Great Britain 
until you touch that delicate and real foundation — we are 
too large and too strong a nation. This is, in my judgment, 
the root of the whole matter. A distinguished clergyman 
of London, personally kind and friendly to me, said to 
me, " Mr. Beecher, you may just as well have it said; you 
have been growing so strong that we have felt for a good 
many years that we had got to take you down, and we 



666 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

were very glad when the job was taken off our hands by 
your own people." When Mr. Roebuck, whose speech it 
was my great privilege to hear, declared that fact in Par- 
liament, it was cheered immensely, but reprobated in TJie 
Times and the other presses that represented the South — 
not because he had not spoken the truth, but because it 
was a truth that it was not best to speak. I have the 
paper, and meant to have brought it to read to-night. It 
was stated in one of the recent issues, in commenting upon 
my speeches there. They very frankly said that this had 
been the growing impression, — that we were a rancorous, 
bellicose, arrogant set of men; that we were proud of our 
sudden growth; and it was even said that Mr. Beecherwas 
regarded as a specimen of what they should have to deal 
with in the nation. I was supposed to be a man breathing 
out slaughter and threats. Now, when they made a mis- 
take so manifest as to suppose that such a peaceful man 
as I am was dangerous, you cannot wonder about the mis- 
take they made in regard to the nation. It is the sun that 
makes seeds grow, it is the light and the stimulating influ- 
ences that makes seeds grow; but, after all, it is the dung- 
hill that makes the hot-bed under them that starts them to 
grow; and it is just exactly that hot-bed that has worked 
upon English feeling, and made predisposing causes which 
have affected the sympathies of Great Britain; it is just 
that underlying influence that has prepared them for this, 
that, and the other prejudice or misinformation. 

With this state of facts, you will ask. How is it, then, 
that this English people have been restrained ? How is it 
that they have not gone into overt belligerency ? The no- 
bility, as a class, are against us — at least, the Government 
is divided, one part being against us; the Plutocracy is 
against us; and I think I may say that while the brains 
that represent progress in Great Britain are in our favor, 
yet the conservative intelligence in Great Britain is against 
us. All that there is upon the surface of society, repre- 
senting its dignities and its power and its intelligence, is 
anti- American; and the question that I propose to you is: 
How — with the papers, and the magazines,, and the uni- 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 667 

versities, how — with their titled estates and their Govern- 
ment and all their powers against us, — how is it that they 
have been restrained as they have been ? It is the influence 
of the unwealthy , and, to a very great extent, the unvoting En- 
glishma7i that restrains them. And that was what I could not 
understand. I learned in England what surprised me — 
that the men that couldn't vote, when everywhere united 
and determined, had the power of controlling the men that 
did vote. That is not an anomaly. It would be in our 
institutions, but it is not in their English institutions; and 
among other reasons because in a nation where one class 
has permanent privilege, and the underlying class none at 
all, the instinct of self-preservation teaches the upper class 
not to goad this underlying class to madness. Everything 
stands on their patience, and there is always that dragon of 
revolution coiled up that they dare not rouse; and therefore 
it is that when the underlying class are determined upon 
any poifit they carry their point. Men whose fortunes are 
made, as a general thing, are against us; men that have 
very little in the present that they care for, that are strug- 
gling for a better future for themselves and for their chil- 
dren, that class is on our side. But they are a class that 
have not much voice and very little expression, and there- 
fore they are but little heard from. Their report is not 
wafted across the sea, but their influence is felt in their own 
land. And it seems to me peculiarly beautiful and fitting 
that we, who are the representatives of the common peo- 
ple, should find that our real allies have been the convnon 
people of Great Britain. 

The result has been that the Government has more and 
more modified its policy, until now it has come to that 
condition in which I believe we all feel satisfied, in the 
main. England has determined that ships of war shall 
not be built in her yards, nor sent out from her ports to 
harry our commerce on the seas. The action of Lord 
John Russell in this has met with some few dissentient 
voices, yet it has carried the assent of the great mass of 
the British public, and the Government was reinforced, 
and will undoubtedly stand upon that platform. There is 



668 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

a growing and enlightened sympathy throughout the 
realm; there is more publishing, there are more men 
lecturing, more meetings being held — all disseminating 
knowledge of the truth about our great conflict — now than 
ever before. When men say that they doubt the English 
feeling, I refer to this fact, that the English Parliament, 
which is known to be adverse to the North, dare not vote 
against it; I advert to this fact, that not more than twelve 
or fifteen meetings out of four or five hundred, in which 
our affairs have been discussed and voted on, have been 
carried against the North. It is a challenge which stands 
open and recorded, that of some eight or ten public meet- 
ings that have been held in Liverpool, there has never been 
one that has been carried against the North. In that great 
meeting which it was my privilege to attend there the vote 
was at least five to one in favor of the North. The noise 
and the tumult with which the meeting was conducted had 
given expectations of something very different, but when 
it came to the vote the noisy ones were about one in five, 
and the men of peace and quiet were four out of five. 

I hold in my hand a letter from Richard Cobden. He 
says: "You will carry back an intimate acquaintance with 
the state of feeling in this country. Among what, for 
want of a better name, I call our ruling class, the sympathy 
is undoubtedly strongly for the South, with an instinctive 
satisfaction at the prospect of the disruption of the Great 
Republic. This is natural enough, but do not forget that 
we have in this case, for the first time in our history, seen 
the masses of the British people taking the side of a for- 
eign Government against its rebellious citizens. In every 
other instance, whether in the case of the Poles, Italians, 
Hungarians, Corsicans, Greeks, or South Americans, the 
popular sympathy of this country has always leaped to the 
side of the insurgents the moment a rebellion has broken 
out. In the present case, our masses have an instinctive 
feeling that their cause is bound up in the prosperity of the 
people of the United States. It is true that they have not 
much power in the direct form of a vote; but when the 
millions of this country are led by the religious middle 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 669 

class, they can together prevent the Government from pur- 
suing a policy hostile to their sympathies. Under these 
circumstances, I think you will agree with me that we may 
consider the great middle class of Englishmen as on the 
side of the North. The upper classes, as they are called, 
are on the side of the South." 

I put no immoderate estimate upon my services in En- 
gland. I believe that I did some good wherever I spoke. 
But it should be remembered that a single man, and a 
stranger in a community, would be eaten up with vanity 
if he supposed that he did all the good that was done, for 
there must have been a preparation; he merely came in to 
touch the train which had already been laid. When in 
October you go to a tree and give it a jar, and the fruit 
rains down all round about you, it is not you that ripened 
and sent down that fruit; the whole summer has been do- 
ing that. It was my good fortune to be there when it was 
needed that some one should jar the tree; the fruit was 
not of my ripening. It is supposed by many of my friends 
that I shall form an unwarrantable estimate of my work 
there. No; my accustomed modesty will stand me yet. 
I see in a letter in the New York Times of yesterday some 
friendly hand writes: — 

"The sympathy of England was never stronger for the South — 
her hatred never so bitter for the North. If Mr. Beecher thinks 
otherwise, he has been deceived by the crowd of Abolition par- 
tisans about him." 

And then he makes some personal statements, which I 
will not read: 

" I cannot now remember the name of one distinguished and 
really influential person who gave him countenance and sup- 
port." 

That is a fact. 

" He was surrounded by dissenting ministers, and members of 
the Emancipation Society." 

Pretty nearly so. 

" The nobility, the clergy of the Established Church, members 
of Parliament, &c., were wanting." 

They were. 



670 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

" Brougham, Wilberforce, Buxton, the great names identified 
with the Anti-Slavery cause in England, were opposed to him, as 
they are opposed to the cause he advocated." 

I will admit that there were no Broughams, no Wilber- 
forces, no Buxtons in audiences that I addressed, and the 
reason was that there are no such men in England. There 
is something that they call "Lord Brougham" left; it is 
not glorious old Harry Brougham; it is Lord Brougham. 
There is a Wilberforce; for the sake of the father we will 
yet courteously honor the name in the son. There is a 
Buxton — the name. And it is perfectly true that if En- 
gland is to be judged by her dignitaries, by her nobility, 
by her more eminent names, England is not with us; but 
if England is to be judged by her middle class — if you 
please to say it, by her influential classes — she is with us. 
At any rate I am not deceived, for I never supposed that 
any other part of England was with us. And that I may 
give some more reliable intelligence allow me to read. 
Among the members of the Government known to be favor- 
able to the Federal cause are the following: The Duke of 
Argyle (who married a daughter of the Duchess of Suther- 
land); Lord Granville; the Right Hon. Charles Pelham Vil- 
liers; Mr. Milner Gibson, Mr. James Stansfield, Mr. Charles 
Gilpin, Members of Parliament. Messrs. John Bright; — 
\cheers\ I told him it would be just so; — Richard Cobden; 
— \cheers\ you know your friends, I see; — W. E. Forster, less 
known but just as firm and steady a friend; E. A. Leatham; 
Guildford Onslow; James White; P. A. Taylor; F. Doul- 
ton; W. Williams, the O'Donnahue; E. Baines, Thomas 
Carnes, W. E. Baxter, James Caird, Samuel Gurney, 
George Hanfield, Grant Duff, James Kershaw, Wilfred 
Lawson. Among the newspapers and magazines favorable 
to the cause are the following: The Morning Star, the 
organ of the advanced Liberal party, managing proprietor 
and editor, Mr. Samuel Lucas; The Daily News, another 
Liberal organ, edited by Mr. Walker, a paper which, if a 
man wants to take The Times without its venom and 
wickedness, he can have. It is just as able as The Times, 
and a thousand times more principled. The evening edi- 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 671 

tions of the above journals, respectively named The Even- 
ing Star and The Express, The Spectator, weekly, edited by 
Mr. Hutton, one of the oldest and most influential of the 
weeklies and distinguished by its calm and philosophical 
tone; Lloyd's Weekly News, edited by Blanchard Jerrold, 
with a circulation of 400,000 weekly — the great hebdoma- 
dal organ of the working classes; The Beehive, organ of the 
trades, miners; The Nonconformist (all sorts of Dissenters); 
The British Standard, Dr. Campbell (Congregationalist) ; 
The Freeman (Baptist); Macmillans Magazine, edited by 
Prof. Masson of Cambridge University; The Dial, weekly 
journal of The Morning Star; The British Ensign (Congre- 
gationalist); The Westminster Review, the quarterly organ 
of English Radicalism; The Observer, the Ministerial 
weekly organ; The Reader, one of their principal literary 
journals. The most popular and widely circulated jour- 
nals in both the metropolis and the country support the 
Northern cause. The aggregate circulation is at least a 
million each issue. Among the leading provincial newspa- 
pers may be mentioned the following: The Manchester Ex- 
aminer, circulating through the manufacturing districts; 
The Newcastle Chronicle; Livei-pool Daily Post; Birminghatn 
Daily Post; Leeds Mercury ; Preston Guardian ; Dundee Adver- 
tiser; Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh; Northern Daily Whig, 
Belfast; Carlisle Examiner; Kendal Merciay, the paper of 
the Lake District; Hampshire Lndependent, Southampton; 
Bradford Advertiser, in which General Perrmet Thompson 
writes weekly; Bedford Mercury; The Lrishman, an organ of 
the Meagher and O'Brien party in Ireland; The Bucks Ad- 
vertiser. Among men distinguished in science and litera- 
ture are the following: Lord Carlisle, Lord Lieutenant of 
Ireland; Lord Houghton, better knows as Monckton 
Milnes, author and poet; Sir Charles Lyell, the eminent 
geologist \cheers\ ; John Stuart Mill, the greatest of En- 
glish philosophers in the present day \applause\ ; Sir 
Stephen Lushington, judge of the Admiralty Court, and 
one of the great leaders in the English struggle against 
Slavery and the slave-trade; Goldwin Smith, the Professor 
of Modern History in the University of Oxford; Prof. 



672 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES^ 

Cairnes, Professor of Political Economy in Belfast Uni- 
versity \cheeriiig\\ Prof. F. W. Newman, the eminent 
Professor of Latin and English literature ; Gen. Perrmet 
Thompson, the founder of the Westminster Review, first 
Governor of Sierra Leone, and author of " The Anti-Corn 
Law Catechism " Yapplause'\ ; Dr. Chapman, the present 
editor of the Westminster Review; Mr. Thomas Hughes, the 
author of " Tom Brown's School Days," the most popular 
work in England next to "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" Mr. 
Edward Small, leader of the English Nonconformists; 
George Wilson, Chairman of the Anti-Corn Law League; 
George Thompson, fellow-laborer with Wilberforce, Clark- 
son, and Brougham in the Anti-Slavery struggle; Prof. 
Nichol, of Glasgow University; Dr. Foster, Chairman of 
the Religious Liberation Society; Prof. Beesly, Professor 
of Political Economy in University Hall; James Taylor, Jr., 
founder of the freehold land movement; Dr. Lees, the 
eminent temperance lecturer; W. tJ. Fox, the late member 
for Oldham; Washington Wilks and Henry Vincent, well 
known as popular leaders or writers; Mr. Scott, the Chair- 
berlain of London; the Mayors of Manchester, Birming- 
ham, Rochdale, and Faversham. Among the clergymen 
and ministers are; Dr. French, Dean of Westminster; Drs. 
Candlish and Grothrie, the leaders of the Free Church of 
Scotland; the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, the Rev. New- 
man Hall, the Rev. William Brock, the Rev. Dr. Halley, 
President of the New College, the Rev. Dr. Angus, Presi- 
dent of Regent's Park College; the Rev. Dr. John Cairns, 
Berwick-on-Tweed; the Rev. Dr. James Begg, Edinburgh; 
the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Alexander, Edinburgh; the Rev. 
Canoh Robinson of York Cathedral; the Rev. Professor 
Maurice, London; the Rev. George Gilfillan, Dundee; the 
Rev. Dr. Anderson, Glasgow; the Rev. Dr. Campbell, Lon- 
don; the Rev. Dr. Hamilton, London; the Rev. Mr. Batch- 
elor, Glasgow. These are only a few of the thousands of 
names of men who are our friends, but these are better 
known, and have signalized their friendship by signal lit- 
erary services in the cause of freedom and of the North. 
I ask you, fellow-citizens, whether, upon the facts I have 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 673 

Stated, there is not reason to believe that after all we have 
been misinformed, and that there is a great undertone in 
England of friendliness and fidelity to us and to our 
cause ? 

I will not attempt repeating the grounds which I took 
in England; I merely wish to add to this statement of facts 
respecting that country a few words as to why we should 
seek by all honorable means to maintain sympathy and 
peaceful relations with England. 

This is not our own struggle, it is the world's battle we 
are fighting; we are set to do the work, but the whole 
world is to enjoy the fruit of our victories; we are strug- 
gling for the rights of the common people, but not of this 
country only. Therefore we ought not to ignore the com- 
mon people of any nation, still less of that nation from 
which we spring, and whose language we still speak — and 
I sometimes think we speak it with more purity than they 
themselves. \_Laughter and cheers.^ If the great underly- 
ing population of England, that is struggling for intelli- 
gence and large political rights; if that great under-class 
are on our side, for t/icir sake we ought to be at peace with 
England, avoiding every cause of offense. For their sake 
who are our friends, let us be patient and reach out cor- 
dial hands, if not to those who should have been our friends 
at the top — to those that are our friends, and who have 
signalized their friendship through famine, hunger, sick- 
ness and suffering untold, without betraying their fidelity 
— for all those men of Lancashire, her starving weavers, are 
fast and firm friends of the North. We are laboring on this 
side with just the difficulties under which the generous, 
just, and enlightened men of Europe are laboring on the 
other side. If they have not precisely the same internal 
difficulties we have, we have felt that we were checked by 
the power of wealth, by the perverse prejudices of classes 
and aristocracies established in this country, or formino-^ 
and we have found whenever we attempted to move, even 
at the North, that we moved against the same impediments 
in our own midst; whatever battle we have fought has 
been a moral battle at home. And so, when our friends 



674 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

have experienced the same difficulties abroad, we are to 
take into consideration their difficulties, and not be impa- 
tient; and if from let and hindrance at home they fail to 
come up to the measure of enthusiasm which we desire 
and which we had prescribed for them; more than ever, it 
seems to me, in hope, patience, generosity, and magna- 
nimity, it becomes us to set an example to them and to the 
nations of the world. We have a better Government, we 
think, than any other nation has. Let us prove it by the 
fruit it brings forth in the citizen. If Lord Brougham — 
who is not, I think, any longer responsible for what he says 
— should say that the American people is a mob, let it be 
ours to show that an American mob is more decent than 
British aristocracy. We are proud of our common schools; 
we are proud of the citizens they make. Let it not be 
mere vanity on our part; let us manifest all the attributes 
of fidelity to our convictions; let us have more patience 
with our friends and more magnanimity to our enemies; 
and particularly let us show to the world one thing more, 
that with our free institutions and common people, who 
can quarry more wealth out of the same earth than 
other people, we have and can maintain a Government 
more cheaply and have it more efficient than any other on 
the face of the earth. While we have the power to daunt 
all foreign enemies and to subdue the most terrific intes- 
tine feuds that ever afflicted any people, let us not be exhib- 
iting mere pride; let us also show to the world that no 
crowns, no coronets, no aristocracies, no educating influ- 
ences, can show another class of people on the globe so 
temperate, so self-restrained, so just and generous in their 
sentiments toward the common people as the great mass of 
common citizens in America. The day is coming when 
nations are to feel each other's hearts more and more 
nearly; when more and more the themes coming up for 
national discussion are those of the moral sentiments; 
when nations are ready to come together with common 
ideas and common feelings, and to know each other. I do 
not hesitate to say, what I did not say in Great Britain, 
that not for any material reason, but for a moral reason, 



RECEPTION IN BROOKLYN. 675 

we need her; and I say more than that, for moral reasons 
she needs us. For the sake of man, for the cause of God, 
for the hope of civilization, the two great nations of the 
earth, carrying on a civilization which is derived from and 
which carries with it the common people and their uplift- 
ing in civilization — these two great Christian nations — 
God forbid that they should ever have to cross hands in 
strife and struggle ! But while other nations are begin- 
ning, though slow in their steps, to look toward the rising 
sun, while even in Russia the frosts begin to glitter in 
that light that ere long shall mold them, then let not 
these former nations that have stood to witness for lib- 
erty and the blessings of free Government fall out by 
the way, but shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, bear- 
ing and forbearing with each other, loving, or hoping 
to love by and by, — let these stand together to pour out to 
every part of the earth the influence of Christianity, civili- 
zation, and human liberty. 

Mr. Low offered a series of resolutions of welcome and compli- 
ment to Mr. Beecher, which, being seconded by Mr. S. B. Chit- 
tenden, were unanimously adopted. 

The Rev. Dr. Storrs — "There is no more to come after the 
King." 

The meeting then adjourned. 



ADDRESS AT THE RAISING OF THE 
UNION FLAG OVER FORT SUMTER, 

April 14, 1865. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: — On this solemn and joyful 
day, we again lift to the breeze our fathers' flag, now again 
the banner of the United States, with the fervent prayer that 
God would crown it with honor, protect it from treason, 
and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of 
civilization, liberty, "and religion. Terrible in battle, may 
it be beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of 
prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem 
the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that 
beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As 
long as the sun endures, or the stars, may it wave over a 
nation neither enslaved nor enslaving. Once, and but once, 
has treason dishonored it. In that insane hour, when the 
guiltiest and bloodiest rebellion of time hurled their fires 
upon this fort, you. Sir [turning to General Anderson], and 
a small heroic band, stood within these now crumbled 
walls, and did gallant and just battle for the honor and de- 
fense of the nation's banner. 

In that cope of fire this glorious flag still peacefully 
waved to the breeze above your head, unconscious of harm 
as the stars and skies above it. Once it was shot down. 
A gallant hand, in whose care this day it has been, plucked 
it from the ground, and reared it again, — " cast down but 
not destroyed." After a vain resistance, with trembling 
hand and sad heart, you withdrew it from its height, 
closed its wings, and bore it far away, sternly to sleep 
amid the tumults of rebellion and the thunder of battle. 

The first act of war had begun. The long night of four 
years had set in. While the giddy traitors whirled in a 




/^^^^/^^^^eyt^tyi^ 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 677 

maze of exhilaration, dim horrors were already advancing, 
that were ere long to fill the land with blood. 

To-day you are Returned again. We devoutly join with 
you in thanksgiving to Almighty God, that he has spared 
your honored life, and vouchsafed you the honors of this 
day. The heavens over you are the same; the same shores; 
morning comes, and evening, as they did. All else, how 
changed ! What grim batteries crowd the burdened 
shores ! What scenes have filled this air and disturbed 
these waters ! These shattered heaps of shapeless stone 
are all that is left of Fort Sumter. Desolation broods in 
yonder sad city — solemn retribution hath avenged our dis- 
honored banner ! You have come back with honor, who 
departed hence, four years ago, leaving the air sultry with 
fanaticism. The surging crowds, that rolled up their 
frenzied shouts as the flag came down, are dead, or scat- 
tered, or silent; and their habitations are desolate. Ruin 
sits in the cradle of treason. Rebellion has perished. But 
there flies the same flag that was insulted. With starry 
eyes it looks all over this bay for the banner that sup- 
planted it, and sees it not. You that then, for the day, 
were humbled, are here again, to triumph once and for- 
ever. In the storm of that assault this glorious ensign was 
often struck; but, memorable fact, not one of its stars was 
torn out, by shot or shell. It was a prophecy ! 

It said: " Not one State shall be struck from this nation 
by treason ! " The fulfillment is at hand. Lifted to the 
air, to-day it proclaims, after four years of war, " Not a 
State is blotted out ! " 

Hail to the flag of our fathers, and our flag ! Glory to 
the banner that has gone through four years black with 
tempests of war, to pilot the nation back to peace without 
dismemberment ! And glory be to God, who, above all 
hosts and banners, hath ordained victory, and shall ordain 
peace ! 

Wherefore have we come hither, pilgrims from distant 
places ? Are we come to exult that Northern hands are 
stronger than Southern ? No, but to rejoice that the hands 
of those who defend a just and beneficent government are 



678 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

mightier than the hands that assaulted it ! Do we exult 
over fallen cities ? We exult that a nation has not fallen. 
We sorrow with the sorrowful. We sympathize with the 
desolate. We look upon this shattered fort, and yonder 
dilapidated city, with sad eyes, grieved that men should 
have committed such treason, and glad that God hath set 
such a mark upon treason that all ages shall dread and 
abhor it. 

We exult, not for a passion gratified, but for a sentiment 
victorious; not for temper, but for conscience; not as we 
devoutly believe that our will is done, but that God's will 
hath been done. We should be unworthy of that liberty 
entrusted to our care, if, on such a day as this, we sullied 
our hearts by feelings of aimless vengeance; and equally 
unworthy, if we did not devoutly thank Him who hath 
said. Vengeance is mine, I 7vill repay, saith the Lord, that he 
hath set a mark upon arrogant Rebellion, ineffaceable 
while Time lasts ! 

Since this flag went down on that dark day, who shall 
tell the mighty woes that have made this land a spectacle 
to angels and men ? The soil has drunk blood, and is 
glutted. Millions mourn for millions slain; or, envying 
the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages have 
been razed. Fruitful fields have turned back to wilderness. 
It came to pass, as the prophet said: The sun was turned to 
darkness, and the moon to blood. The course of law was 
ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation; 
industry was paralyzed; morals corrupted; the public 
weal invaded by rapine and anarchy; whole States ravaged 
by avenging armies. The world was amazed. The earth 
reeled. When the flag sank here, it was as if political 
night had come, and all beasts of prey had come forth to 
devour. 

That long night has ended ! And for this returning day 
we have come from afar, to rejoice and give thanks. No 
more war ! No more accursed secession ! No more slav- 
ery, that spawned them both ! 

Let no man misread the meaning of this unfolding flag ! 
It says, "Government hath returned hither." It pro- 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 679 

claims in the name of vindicated government, peace and 
protection to loyalty; humiliation and pains to traitors. 
This is the flag of sovereignty. The Nation, not the States, 
is sovereign. Restored to authority, this flag commands, 
not supplicates. 

There may be pardon, but no concession. There may 
be amnesty and oblivion, but no honeyed compromises. 
The nation to-day has peace for the peaceful, and war for 
the turbulent. The only condition of submission, is, to 
submit ! There is the Constitution, there are the laws, 
there is the Government. They rise up like mountains of 
strength that shall not be moved. They are the condi- 
tions of peace. 

One nation, under one goziernment, without slavery, has been 
ordained, and shall stand. There can be peace on no other 
basis. On this basis reconstruction is easy, and needs 
neither architect nor engineer. Without this basis no en- 
gineer or architect shall ever reconstruct these rebellious 
States. 

We do not want your cities nor your fields. We do not 
envy you your prolific soil, nor heavens full of perpetual 
summer. Let agriculture revel here; let manufactures 
make every stream twice musical; build fleets in every 
port; inspire the arts of peace and genius second only to 
that of Athens; and we shall be glad in your gladness, and 
rich in your wealth. 

All that we ask is unswerving loyalty, and universal lib- 
erty. And that, in the name of this high sovereignty of 
the United States of America, we demand; and that, with 
the blessing of Almighty God, 7ve will have ! 

We raise our fathers' banner that it may bring back bet- 
ter blessings than those of old; that it may cast out the 
devil of discord; that it may restore lawful government, 
and a prosperity purer and more enduring than that which 
it protected before; that it may win parted friends from 
their alienation; that it may inspire hope, and inaugurate 
universal liberty; that it may say to the sword, " Return 
to thy sheath," and to the plow and sickle, " Go forth;" 
that it may heal all jealousies, unite all policies, inspire a 



68o PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

new national life, compact our strength, purify our princi- 
ples, ennoble our national ambitions, and make this people 
great and strong, not for aggression and quarrelsomeness, 
iDut for the peace of the world, giving to us the glorious 
prerogative of leading all nations to juster laws, to more 
humane policies, to sincerer friendship, to rational, insti- 
tuted civil liberty, and to universal Christian brotherhood. 

Reverently, piously, in hopeful patriotism, we spread this 
banner on the sky, as of old the bow was planted on the 
cloud; and, with solemn fervor, beseech God to look upon 
it, and make it the memorial of an everlasting covenant 
and decree that never again on this fair land shall a deluge 
of blood prevail. 

Why need any eye turn from this spectacle ? Are there 
not associations which, overleaping the recent past, carry us 
back to times when, over North and South, this flag was 
honored alike by all ? In all our colonial days, we were 
one; in the long Revolutionary struggle; and in the scores 
of prosperous years succeeding. When the passage of the 
Stamp Act in 1765 aroused the colonies, it was Gadsden of 
South Carolina that cried with prescient enthusiasm: "We 
stand on the broad common ground of those natural rights 
that we all feel and know as men. There ought to be no 
New England man, no New Yorker, known on this conti- 
nent, but all of us," said he, "Americans." That 7vas the 
voice of South Carolina: that sliall be the voice of South 
Carolina. Faint is the echo; but it is coming. We now 
hear it sighing sadly through the pines; but it shall yet 
break upon the shore — no North, no West, no South, but 
one United States of America. 

There is scarcely a man born in the South who has 
lifted his hand against this banner, but had a father who 
would have died for it. Is memory dead ? Is there no his- 
toric pride? Has a fatal fury struck blindness or hate into 
eyes that used to look kindly toward each other; that read 
the same Bible; that hung over the same historic pages 
of our national glory; that studied the same Constitution ? 

Let this uplifting bring back all of the past that was 
good, but leave in darkness all that was bad. 



" FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 68l 

It was never before so wholly unspotted; so clear of all 
wrong; so purely and simply the sign of Justice and Lib- 
erty. Did I say that we brought back the same banner 
that you bore away, noble and heroic Sir ? It is not the 
same. It is more and better than it was. The land is free 
from slavery since that banner fell. 

When God would prepare Moses for Emancipation, he 
overthrew his first steps, and drove him for forty years to 
brood in the wilderness. When our flag came down, four 
years it lay brooding in darkness. It cried to the Lord, 
" Wherefore am I deposed ? " Then arose before it a 
vision of its sin. It had strengthened the strong, and for- 
gotten the weak. It proclaimed liberty, but trod upon 
slaves. 

In that seclusion it dedicated itself to liberty. Behold, 
to-day, it fulfills its vows ! When it went down, four 
million people had no flag. To-day it rises, and four 
million people cry out, " Behold our banner ! " Hark ! 
they murmur. It is the Gospel that they recite in sacred 
words: "It is a Gospel to the poor, it heals our broken 
hearts, it preaches deliverance to captives, it gives sight to 
the blind, it sets at liberty them that are bruised." , Rise 
up, then, glorious Gospel Banner, and roll out these mes- 
sages of God. Tell the air that not a spot now sullies thy 
whiteness. Thy red is not the blush of shame, but the 
flush of joy. Tell the dews that wash thee that thou art 
as pure as they. Say to the night, that thy stars lead to- 
ward the morning; and to the morning, that a brighter 
day arises with healing in its wings. And then, O glorious 
flag, bid the sun pour light on all thy folds with double 
brightness, whilst thou art bearing around and round the 
world the solemn joy — a race set free ! a nation redeemed ! 

The mighty hand of Government, made strong in war 
by the favor of the God of Battles, spreads wide to-day 
the banner of liberty that went down in darkness, that 
rose in light; and there it streams, like the sun above it, 
neither parceled out nor monopolized, but flooding the 
air with light for all mankind. Ye scattered and broken, 
ye wounded and dying, bitten by the fiery serpents of op- 



682 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

pression, everywhere, in all the world, look upon this sign 
lifted up, and live ! And ye homeless and houseless slaves, 
look, and ye are free ! At length you, too, have part and 
lot in this glorious ensign, that broods with impartial love 
over small and great, the poor and the strong, the bond 
and the free ! In this solemn hour, let us pray for the 
quick coming of reconciliation and happiness, under this 
common flag ! 

But we must build again, from the foundations, in all 
these now free Southern States. No cheap exhortation 
" to forgetfulness of the past, to restore all things as they 
were," will do. God does not stretch out his hand, as he 
has for four dreadful years, that men may easily forget the 
might of his terrible acts. Restore things as they were ? 
What, the alienations and jealousies ? The discords and 
contentions, and the causes of them ? No. In that solemn 
sacrifice on which a nation has offered up for its sins so 
many precious victims, loved and lamented, let our sins 
and mistakes be consumed utterly and forever. 

No, never again shall things be restored as before the 
war. It is written in God's decree of events fulfilled, 
" Old- things are passed away." That new earth, in which 
dwelleth righteousness, draws near. 

Things as they were ? Who has an omnipotent hand to 
restore a million dead, slain in battle, or wasted by sick- 
ness, or dying of grief, broken-hearted ? Who has omnis- 
cience, to search for the scattered ones ? Who shall re- 
store the lost to broken families ? Who shall bring back 
the squandered treasure, the years of industry wasted, and 
convince you that four years of guilty rebellion, and cruel 
war, are no more than dirt upon the hand which a mo- 
ment's washing removes, and leaves the hand clean as be- 
fore ? Such a war reaches down to the very vitals of so- 
ciety. 

Emerging from such a prolonged rebellion, he is blind 
who tells you that the State, by a mere amnesty and 
benevolence of Government, can be put again, by a mere 
decree, in its old place. It would not be honest, it would 
not be kind or fraternal, for me to pretend that Southern 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 683 

revolution against the Union has not reacted, and wrought 
revolution in the Southern States themselves, and inaugu- 
rated a new dispensation. 

Society is like a broken loom, and the piece which Re- 
bellion put in and was weaving, has been cut, and every 
thread broken. You must put in new warp and new woof 
— and, weaving anew, as the fabric slowly unwinds, we 
shall see in it no gorgon figures, no hideous grotesques of 
the old barbarism, but the figures of vines and golden 
grains, framing in the heads of Justice, Love, and Lib- 
erty ! 

The august Convention of 1787 set forth the Constitu- 
tion with this memorable preamble: " We, the people of 
the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, 
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for 
the common defense, promote the general welfare, and se- 
cure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our poster- 
ity, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of 
America." 

Again, in the awful convention of war, the people of 
the United States, for the very ends just recited, have de- 
bated, settled and ordained certain fundamental truths, 
which must henceforth be accepted and obe5^ed. Nor is 
any State or any individual wise who shall disregard them. 
They are to civil affairs what the natural laws are to health 
— indispensable conditions of peace and happiness. 

What are the ordinances given by the people, speaking 
out of fire and darkness of war, with authority inspired by 
that same God who gave the laws from Sinai amid 
thunders and trumpet voices ? 

First, that these United States shall be one and indivisi- 
ble. 

Second, that States are not absolute sovereigns, and 
have no right to dismember the republic. 

Third, that universal liberty is indispensable to repub- 
lican government, and that slavery shall be utterly and 
forever abolished. 

Such are the results of war ! These are the best fruits 
of the war. They are worth all they have cost. They are 



684 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the foundations of peace. They will secure benefits to all 
nations, as well as to us. 

Our highest wisdom and duty is to accept the facts as 
the decrees of God. We are exhorted to forget all that 
has happened. Yes, the wrath, the conflict, the cruelty, 
but not those overruling decrees of God, which this war 
has pronounced. As solemnly as on Mount Sinai, God 
says, "Remember ! Remember ! '' Hear it, to-day. Under 
this sun, under that bright child of the sun, our banner, 
with the eyes of this nation and of the world upon us, we 
repeat the syllables of God's providence, and recite the 
solemn decrees: 

No MORE Disunion ! 

No MORE Secession ! 

No more Slavery ! 

Why did this civil war begin ? 

We do not wonder that European statesmen failed to 
comprehend this conflict, and foreign philanthropists were 
shocked at a murderous war, that seemed to have had no 
moral origin, but, like the brutal fights of beasts of prey, 
to have sprung from ferocious animalism. This great na- 
tion, filling all profitable latitudes, cradled between two 
oceans, with inexhaustible resources, with riches increas- 
ing in an unparalleled ratio, by agriculture, by manufact- 
ures, by commerce, with schools and churches, with books 
and newspapers, thick as leaves in our own forests, with 
institutions sprung from the people, and peculiarly adapted 
to their genius; a nation not sluggish, but active, used to 
excitement, practiced in political wisdom, and accustomed 
to self-government, and all its vast outlying parts held to- 
gether by a federal government, mild in temper, gentle in 
administration, and beneficent in results, — we do not won- 
der that it is not understood abroad. 

All at once, in this hemisphere of happiness and hope, 
there came trooping clouds with fiery bolts, full of death 
and desolation. At a cannon shot upon this fort, all the 
nation, as if they had been a trained army lying on their 
arms, awaiting a signal, rose up and began a war which, 
for awfulness, rises into the first rank of bad eminence. 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 685 

The front of battle, going with the sun, was twelve hun- 
dred miles long; and the depth, measured along a merid- 
ian, was a thousand miles. In this vast area, more than 
two million men, first and last, for four years, have in 
skirmish, fight and battle, met in more than a thousand 
conflicts; while a coast and river line, not less than four 
thousand miles in length, has swarmed with fleets, 
freighted with artillery. The very industry of the country 
seemed to have been touched by some infernal wand, and 
with one wheel, changed its front from peace to war. The 
anvils of the land beat like drums. As out of the ooze 
emerge monsters, so from our mines and foundries uprose 
new and strange machines of war, iron-clad. 

And thus, in a nation of peaceful habits, without exter- 
nal provocation, there arose such a storm of war as black- 
ened the whole horizon and hemisphere. What wonder 
that foreign observers stood amazed at this fanatical fury, 
that seemed without divine guidance, but inspired wholly 
with infernal frenzy ? 

The explosion was sudden, but the train had long been 
laid. We must consider the condition of Southern society, 
if we would understand the mystery of this iniquity. So- 
ciety in the South resolves itself into three divisions, more 
sharply distinguished than in any other part of the nation. 
At the base is the laboring class, made up of slaves. Next 
is the middle class, made up of traders, small farmers, and 
poor men. The lower edge of this class touched the slave 
and the upper edge reached up to the third and ruling 
class. This class were a small minority in numbers, but in 
practiced ability they had centered in their hands the gov- 
ernment of the South, and had mainly governed the whole 
country. 

Upon this polished, cultured, exceedingly capable and 
wholly unprincipled class, rests the whole burden of this 
war. Forced up by the bottom heat of slavery, the ruling 
class, in all the disloyal States, arrogated to themselves a 
superiority not compatible with republican equality nor 
with just morals. They claimed a right of pre-eminence. 
An evil prophet arose who trained these wild and luxuri- 



686 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ant shoots of ambition to the shapely form of a political 
philosophy. 

By its re-agents they precipitated drudgery to the bot- 
tom of society, and left at the top what they thought to be 
a clarified fluid. In their political economy, labor was to 
be owned by capital. In their theory of government, a 
few were to rule many. They boldly avowed, not alone 
the fact that under all forms of government the few rule 
the many, but their right and duty to do so. Set free 
from the necessity of labor, they conceived a contempt for 
those who felt its wholesome regimen. Believing them- 
selves fore-ordained to supremacy, they regarded the pop- 
ular vote, when it failed to register their wishes, as an in- 
trusion and a nuisance. They were born in a garden, and 
popular liberty, like freshets, overswelling their banks, but 
covered their dainty walks and flowers with slime and mud 
— of democratic votes. 

When, with shrewd observation, they saw the growth of 
the popular element in the Northern States, they instinct- 
ively took in the inevitable events. It must be controlled, 
or cut off from a nation governed by gentlemen ! Con- 
trolled, less and less, could it be, in every decade; and 
they prepared secretly, earnestly, and with wide conference 
and mutual connivance to effect the separation. 

We are to distinguish between the pretenses, and means, 
and causes of this war. 

To inflame and unite the great middle class of the South 
who had no interest in separation, and no business with 
war, they alleged grievances that never existed, and em- 
ployed arguments which they better than all other men 
knew to be specious and false. Slavery itself was cared 
for only as an instrument of power, or of excitement. 
They had unalterably fixed their eyes upon empire, and all 
was good which would secure that, and bad which hin- 
dered it. 

Thus, the ruling class of the South, an aristocracy as 
intense, proud, and inflexible as ever existed, not limited 
either by customs or institutions, not recognized and ad- 
justed in the regular order of society and playing a recip- 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 687 

rocal part in its machinery, but secretly disowning its own 
existence, baptized with ostentatious names of Democracy, 
obsequious to the people for the sake of governing them; 
this nameless, lurking aristocracy, that ran in the blood of 
society like a rash not yet come to the skin; this political 
tape-worm, that produced nothing, but lay coiled in the 
body, feeding on its nutriment, and holding the whole 
structure but a servant set up to nourish it — this aristoc- 
racy of the plantation, with firm and deliberate resolve, 
brought on the war that they might cut the land in two; and 
clearing themselves from incorrigible free society, set up 
a sterner, statelier empire, where slaves should work that 
gentlemen might live at ease. Nor can there be any doubt 
that though, at first, they meant to erect the form of re- 
publican government, this was but a device; a step neces- 
sary to the securing of that power by which they should 
be able to change the whole economy of society. 

That they never dreamed of such a war, we may well be- 
lieve. That they would have accepted it, though twice as 
bloody, if only thus they could rule, none can doubt that 
knows the temper of these worst men of modern society. 
But they miscalculated. They understood the people of 
the South; but they were totally incapable of understand- 
ing the character of the great working classes of the loyal 
States. That industry which is the foundation of inde- 
pendence, and so of equity, they stigmatized as stupid 
drudgery, or as mean avarice. That general intelligence 
and independence of thought which schools for the com- 
mon people and newspapers breed, they reviled as the 
incitement of unsettled zeal, running easily into fanati- 
cism. 

They more thoroughly misunderstood the profound sen- 
timent of loyalty; the deep love of country which pervaded 
the common people. If those who knew them best had 
never suspected the depth and power of that love of coun- 
try which threw it into an agony of grief when the flag 
was here humbled, how should they conceive of it, who were 
wholly disjoined from the people in sympathy ? The whole 
land rose up, you remember, when the flag came down, as 



688 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

if inspired unconsciously by the breath of the Almighty 
and the power of omnipotence. It was as when one pierces 
the banks of the Mississippi for a rivulet, and the whole 
raging stream plunges through with headlong course. 
There they calculated, and w/Vcalculated ! 

And more than all, they miscalculated the bravery of 
men who have been trained under law, who are civilized, 
and hate personal brawls, who are so protected by society 
as to have dismissed all thought of self-defense, the whole 
force of whose life is turned to peaceful pursuits. These 
arrogant conspirators against government, with Chinese 
vanity believed that they could blow away these self- 
respecting citizens as chaff from the battle-field. Few of 
them are left alive to ponder their mistake ! 

Here, then, are the roots of this civil war. It w^as not a 
quarrel of wild beasts; it was an inflection of the strife of 
ages between power and right, between ambition and 
equity. An armed band of pestilent conspirators sought 
the nation's life. Her children rose up and fought at 
every door, and room and hall, to thrust out the murder- 
ers, and save the house and household. It was not legiti- 
mately a war betiueeii the common peoples of the North and of 
the South. The war was set on by the ruling class, the aris- 
tocratic conspirators, of the South. They suborned their 
own common people with lies, with sophistries, with cruel 
deceits and slanders, to fight for secret objects which they 
abhorred, and against interests as dear to them as their 
own lives. 

I charge the whole guilt of this war upon the ambitious, 
educated, plotting, political leaders of the South. They 
have shed this ocean of blood. They have desolated the 
South. They have poured poverty through all her towns 
and cities. They have bewildered the imagination of the 
people with phantasms, and led them to believe that they 
were fighting for their homes and liberty, whose homes 
were unthreatened, and whose liberty was in no jeopardy. 

These arrogant instigators of civil war have renewed 
the plagues of Egypt, not that the oppressed might go 
free, but that the free might be oppressed. A day will 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 689 

come when God will reveal judgment, and arraign at his 
bar these mighty miscreants; and then every orphan that 
their bloody game has made, and every widow that sits 
sorrowing, and every maimed and wounded sufferer, and 
every bereaved heart in all the wide regions of this land, will 
rise up and come before the Lord to lay upon these chief 
culprits of modern history their awful testimony. And 
from a thousand battle-fields shall rise up armies of airy 
witnesses, who, with the memory of their awful sufferings, 
shall confront these miscreants with shrieks of fierce accu- 
sation; and every pale and starved prisoner shall raise his 
skinny hand in judgment. Blood shall call out for ven- 
geance, and tears shall plead for justice, and grief shall 
silently beckon, and love, heart-smitten, shall wail for 
justice. Good men and angels will cry out, "How long, 
O Lord, how long, wilt thou not avenge ! " 

And, then, these guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, 
these high and cultured men with might and wisdom, 
used for the destruction of their country; these most ac- 
cursed and detested of all criminals, that have drenched a 
continent in needless blood, and moved the foundations 
of their times with Mdeous crimes and cruelty, caught up 
in black clouds full of voices of vengeance and lurid with 
punishment, shall be whirled aloft and plunged downward 
forever and forever in an endless retribution; while God 
shall say, "Thus shall it be to all who betray their country;" 
and all in heaven and upon the earth will say, "Amen ! " 

But for the people misled, for the multitudes drafted 
and driven into this civil war, let not a trace of animosity 
remain. The moment the willing hand drops the musket, 
and they return to their allegiance, then stretch out your 
own honest right hands to greet them. Recall to them the 
old days of kindness. Our hearts wait for their redemp- 
tion. All the resources of a renovated nation shall be ap- 
plied to rebuild their prosperity, and smooth down the 
furrows of the war. 

Has this long and weary period of strife been an un- 

mingled evil ? Has nothing been gained ? Yes, much. 

This nation has attained to its manhood. 
44 



690 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Among Indian customs is one which admits young men 
to the rank of warriors only after severe trials of hunger, 
fatigue, pain, endurance. They reach their station, not 
through years, but ordeals. Our nation has suffered, and 
now is strong. 

The sentiment of loyalty and patriotism, next in impor- 
tance to religion, has been rooted and grounded. We have 
something to be proud of; and pride helps love. Never 
so much as now did we love our country. 

But four such years of education in ideas, in the knowl- 
edge of political truth, in the lore of history, in the geog- 
raphy of our own country, almost every inch of which we 
have probed with the bayonet, have never passed before. 
There is half a hundred years' advance in four. 

We believed in our institutions and principles before; but 
now we knoiv their power. It is one thing to look upon 
artillery, and be sure that it is loaded; it is another thing 
to see its discharge. We believed in the hidden power 
stored in our institutions; we had never before seen this 
nation thundering like Mount Sinai at all those that wor- 
shiped the calf at the base of the mountain. 

A people educated and moral are Competent to all the 
exigencies of national life. A vote can govern better than 
a crown. We have proved it. A people intelligent and 
religious are strong in all economic elements. They are 
fitted for peace and competent to war. They are not 
easily inflamed; and when justly incensed, not easily ex- 
tinguished. They are patient in adversity, endure cheer- 
fully needful burdens, tax themselves for real wants more 
royally than any prince would dare to tax his people. 
They pour forth, without stint, relief for the sufferings of 
war, and raise charity out of the realm of a dole, into a 
munificent duty of beneficence. 

The habit of industry among free men prepares them to 
meet the exhaustion of war with increase of productive- 
ness commensurate with the need that exists. Their habits 
of skill enable them at once to supply such armies as only 
freedom can muster, with arms and munitions such as only 
free industry can create. Free society is terrible in war. 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 691 

and afterwards repairs the mischief of war with a celerity 
almost as great as that with which the ocean heals the 
seams gashed in it by the keel of a plowing ship. 

Free society is fruitful of military genius. It comes 
when called: when no longer needed it falls back as waves 
do to the level of the common sea, that no wave may be 
greater than the undivided water. With proof of strength 
so great, yet in its infancy, we stand up among the nations 
of the world asking no privileges, asserting no rights, but 
quietly assuming our place, and determined to be second 
to none in the race of civilization and religion. 

Of all nations we are the most dangerous, and the least 
to be feared. We need not expound the perils that wait 
upon enemies that assault us. They are sufficiently under- 
stood. But it is not because we are warlike that we are a 
dangerous people. All the arrogant attitudes of this na- 
tion, so offensive formerly to foreign governments, were 
inspired by Slavery, and under the administrations of its 
minions. Our tastes, our habits, our interests, and our 
principles, incline us to the arts of peace. 

This nation was founded by the common people, for the 
common people. We are seeking to embody in public 
economy more liberty with higher justice and virtue, than 
have been organized before. By the necessity of our doc- 
trines, we are put in sympathy with the masses of men in 
all nations. It is not our business to subdue nations, but 
to augment the powers of the common people. The vul- 
gar ambition of mere domination, as it belongs to uni- 
versal human nature, may tempt us; but it is withstood by 
the whole force of our principles, our habits, our prece- 
dents, and our legends. 

We acknowledge the obligation which our better po- 
litical principles lay upon us to set an example more tem- 
perate, humane, and just, than monarchical governments 
can. We will not suffer wrong, and still less will we in- 
flict it upon other nations. Nor are we concerned that so 
many ignorant of our conflict, for the present, misconceive 
the reasons of our invincible military zeal. " Why con- 
tend," say they, "for a little territory that you do not 



692 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

need?" Because it is ours ! Because it is the interest of 
every citizen to save it from becoming a fortress and ref- 
uge of iniquity. This nation is our house, and our 
father's house; and accursed be the man who will not de- 
fend it to the uttermost ! More territory than we need ? 
England, that is not large enough to be our pocket, may 
think that it is more than we need; but we are better 
judges of what we need than they are ! 

Shall a philanthropist say to a banker who defends him- 
self against a robber, '* Why do you need so much money ? " 
But we will not reason with such questions. When any 
foreign nation willingly will divide their territory and give 
it cheerfully away, we will answer the question why we are 
fighting for territory ! 

I now pass to the consideration of benefits that accrue 
to the South in distinction from the rest of the nation. 
At present the South reaps only suffering; but good seed 
lies buried under the furrows of war, that peace will bring 
to harvest. 

1. Deadly doctrines have been purged away in blood. 
The subtle poison of secession was a perpetual threat of 
revolution. The sword has ended that danger. That 
which reason had affirmed as a philosophy, the people have 
settled as a fact. Theory pronounces, " There can be no 
permanent government where each integral particle has 
liberty to fly off." Who would venture upon a voyage on 
a ship, each plank and timber of which might withdraw at 
its pleasure ? But the people have reasoned by the logic 
of the sword and of the ballot, and they have declared 
that States are inseparable parts of national government. 
They are not sovereign. State rights remain; but so7'er- 
eignty is a right higher than all others; and that has been 
made into a common stock for the benefit of all. All 
further agitation is ended. This element must be cast out 
of our political problems. Henceforth that poison will not 
rankle in the blood. 

2. Another thing has been learned: the rights and duties 
of minorities. The people of the whole nation are of more 
authority than the people of any section. These United 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISING. 693 

States are supreme over Northern, Eastern, Western, and 
Southern States. It ought not to have required the awful 
chastisement of this war to teach that a minority must sub- 
mit the control of the nation's government to a majority. 
The army and the navy have been good political school- 
masters. The lesson is learned. Not for many genera- 
tions will it require further illustration. 

3. No other lesson will be more fruitful of peace than 
the dispersion of those conceits of vanity, which, on either 
side, have clouded the recognition of the manly courage 
of all Americans. If it be a sign of manhood to be able to 
fight, then Americans are men. The North certainly are 
in no doubt whatever of the soldierly qualities of South- 
ern men. Southern soldiers have learned that all latitudes 
breed courage on this continent. Courage is a passport 
to respect. The people of all the regions of this nation 
are likely hereafter to cherish a generous admiration of 
each other's prowess. The war has bred respect, and re- 
spect will breed affection, and affection peace and unity. 

4. No other event of the war can fill an intelligent 
Southern man of candid nature with more surprise than 
the revelation of the capacity, moral and military, of the 
black race. It is a revelation, indeed. No people were 
ever less understood by those most familiar with them. 
They were said to be lazy, lying, impudent, and cowardly 
wretches, driven by the whip alone to the tasks needful to 
their own support, and the functions of civilization. They 
were said to be dangerous, blood-thirsty, liable to insur- 
rection; but four years of tumultuous distress and war 
have rolled across the area inhabited by them, and I have 
yet to hear of one authentic instance of the misconduct of 
a colored man. They have been patient and gentle and 
docile in the land, while the men of the South were away 
in the army, they have been full of faith and hope and 
piety; and when summoned to freedom they have emerged 
with all the signs and tokens that freedom will be to them 
what it was to be — the swaddling band that shall bring 
them to manhood. And after the Government, honoring 
them as men, summoned them to the field, when once they 



694 PATRIOTJC ADDRESSES. 

were disciplined and had learned the art of war, they 
proved themselves to be not second to their white brethren 
in arms. And when the roll of men that have shed their 
blood is called in the other land, many and many a dusky 
face will rise, dark no more, when the light of eternal 
glory shall shine upon it from the throne of God. 

5. The industry of the So*uthern States is regenerated 
and now rests upon a basis that never fails to bring pros- 
perity. Just now industry is collapsed; but it is not dead. 
It sleepeth. It is vital yet. It will spring like mown 
grass from the roots, that need but showers and heat and 
time to bring them forth. Though in many districts not a 
generation will see wanton v/astes of self-invoked war re- 
paired, and many portions may lapse again to wilderness; 
yet, in our life-time we shall see States, as a whole, raised 
to a prosperity, vital, wholesome, and immovable. 

6. The destruction of class interests, working with a 
religion which tends towards true democracy in proportion 
as it is pure and free, will create a new era of prosperity 
for the common laboring people of the South. Upon them 
has come the labor, the toil, and the loss of this war. 
They have fought blindfolded. They have fought for a 
class that sought their degradation, while they were made 
to believe that it was for their own homes and altars. 
Their leaders meant a supremacy which would not long 
have left them political liberty, save in name. But their 
leaders are swept away. The sword has been hungry for 
the ruling classes. It has sought them out with remorse- 
less zeal. New men are to rise up; new ideas are to bud 
and blossom; and there will be men with different ambi- 
tion and altered policy. 

7. Meanwhile, the South, no longer a land of planta- 
tions, but of farms; no longer tilled by slaves, but by free- 
men, will find no hindrance to the spread of education. 
Schools will multiply. Books and papers will spread. 
Churches will bless every hamlet. There is a good day 
coming for the South. Through darkness, and tears, and 
blood she has sought it. It has been an unconscious Via 
Dolorosa. But, in the end, it will be worth all it has cost. 



FORT SUMTER FLAG-RAISIXG. 695 

Her institutions before were deadly. She nourished death 
in her bosom. The greater her secular prosperity, the 
more sure was her ruin. Every year of delay but made 
the change more terrible. Now, by an earthquake, the 
evil is shaken down. Her own historians, in a better 
day, shall write that from the day the sword cut off the 
cancer she began to find her health. 

What, then, shall hinder the rebuilding of this republic ? 
The evil spirit is cast out: why should not this nation 
cease to wander among tombs, cutting itself ? Why should 
it not come, clothed and in its right mind, to "sit at the 
feet of Jesus " ? Is it feared that the Government will op- 
press the conquered States ? What possible motive has 
the Government to narrow the base of that pyramid on 
which its own permanence stands ? 

Is it feared that the rights of the States will be with- 
held ? The South is not more jealous of their State rights 
than the North. State rights, from the earliest colonial 
days, have been the peculiar pride and jealousy of New 
England. In every stage of national formation, it was 
peculiarly Northern, and not Southern, statesmen that 
guarded State rights as we were forming the Constitution. 
But, once united, the loyal States gave up forever that 
which had been delegated to the National Government. 
And now, in the hour of victory, the loyal States do not 
mean to trench upon Southern States' rights. They will 
not do it, or suffer it to be done. There is not to be one 
rule for high latitudes, and another for low. We take 
nothing from the Southern States that has not already 
been taken from Northern. The South shall have just 
those rights that every Eastern, every Middle, every West- 
ern State has — no more, no less. 

We are not seeking our own aggrandizement by im- 
poverishing the South. Its prosperity is an indispensable 
element of our own. We have shown, by all that we have 
suffered in war, how great is our estimate of the impor- 
tance of the Southern States of this Union, and we will 
measure that estimate, now, in peace, by still greater ex- 
ertions for their rebuilding. 



696 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Will reflecting men perceive, then, the wisdom of ac- 
cepting established facts; and, with alacrity of enterprise, 
begin to retrieve the past ? 

Slavery cannot come back. It is the interest therefore 
of every man to hasten its end. Do you want more war ? 
Are you not yet weary of contest? Will you gather up 
the unexploded fragments of this prodigious magazine of 
all mischief, and heap them up for continued explosion ? 
Does not the South need peace ? And, since free labor is 
inevitable, will you have it in its worst forms or its best ? 
Shall it be ignorant, impertinent, indolent ? or, shall it be 
educated, self-respecting, moral, and self-supporting? 
Will you have men as drudges, or will you have them as 
citizens ? Since they have vindicated the Government, 
and cemented its foundation stones with their blood, may 
they not offer the tribute of their support to maintain its 
laws and its policy? It is better for religion; it is better 
for political integrity; it is better for industry; it is better 
for money — if you will have that ground motive — that you 
should educate the black man; and, by education, make him 
a citizen. They who refuse education to a black man, would 
turn the South into a vast poor-house, and labor into a pen- 
dulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence. 

From this pulpit of broken stone we speak forth our 
earnest greeting to all our land. 

We offer to the President of these United States our 
solemn congratulations that God has sustained his life and 
health under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of 
four bloody years, and permitted him to behold this aus- 
picious consummation of that national unity for which he 
has waited with so much patience and fortitude, and for 
which he has labored with such disinterested wisdom. 

To the members of the Government associated with him 
in the administration of perilous affairs in critical times; 
to the Senators and Representatives of the United States 
who have eagerly fashioned the instruments by which the 
popular will might express and enforce itself, we tender 
our grateful thanks. 



FORT SUMTEK FLAG-RAISING. 697 

To the officers and men of the army and navy, who have 
so faithfully, skillfully, and gloriously upheld their coun- 
try's authority, by suffering, labor, and sublime courage, 
we offer here a tribute beyond the compass of words. 

Upon those true and faithful citizens, men and women, 
who have borne up with unflinching hope in the darkest 
hour, and covered the land with the labors of love and 
charity, we invoke the divinest blessing of Him whom 
they have so truly imitated. 

But chiefly to Thee, God of our fathers, we render 
thanksgiving and praise for that wondrous providence 
that has brought forth, from such a harvest of war, the 
seed of so much liberty and peace. 

We invoke peace upon the North. Peace be to the 
West. Peace be upon the South ! 

In the name of God, we lift up our banner, and dedicate 
it to Peace, Union, and Liberty, now and forevermore. 
Amen. 



Ill 



CIVIL LIBERTY 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



" And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of 
Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord 
shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the 
land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the ut- 
most sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of 
palm trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him, This is the land 
which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will 
give it unto thy seed : I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou 
shalt not go over thither. So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in 
the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord." — Deut. xxxiv. 1-5. 



There is no historic figure more noble than that of 
the Jewish lawgiver. After so many thousand years, the 
figure of Moses is not diminished, but stands up against 
the background of early days distinct and individual as if 
he had lived but yesterday. There is scarcely another 
event in history more touching than his death. He had 
borne the great burdens of state for forty years, shaped 
the Jews to a nation, filled out their civil and religious 
polity, administered their laws, guided their steps, or dealt 
with them in all their journeyings in the wilderness; had 
mourned in their punishment, kept step with their march, 
and led them in wars until the end of their labors drew 
nigh. The last stage was reached. Jordan, only, lay be- 
tween them and "the promised land." The Promised 
Land ! O, what yearnings had heaved his breast for that 
divinely foreshadowed place ! He had dreamed of it by 
night, and mused by day; it was holy and endeared as 
God's favored spot. It was to be the cradle of an illustri- 
ous history. All his long, laborious, and now weary life, 

* Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Sunday Morning, April 23, 1865, the week 
following President Lincoln's assassination. 



702 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

he had aimed at this as the consummation of every desire, 
the reward of every toil and pain. Then came the word 
of the Lord to him, " Thou mayest not go over. Get thee 
up into the mountain; look upon it; and die ! " 

From that silent summit the hoary leader gazed to the 
north, to the south, to the west, with hungry eyes. The 
dim outlines rose up. The hazy recesses spoke of quiet 
valleys between hills. With eager longing, with sad resig- 
nation, he looked upon the promised land. It was now to 
him a forbidden land. This w^as but a moment's anguish, 
he forgot all his personal wants, and drank in the vision of 
his people's home. His work was done. There lay God's 
promise fulfilled. There was the seat of coming Jerusa- 
lem; there the city of Judah's King; the sphere of judges 
and prophets; the Mount of sorrow and salvation; the nest 
whence were to fly blessings innumerable to all mankind. 
Joy chased sadness from every feature, and the prophet laid 
him down and died. 

Again a great leader of the people has passed through 
toil, sorrow, battle, and war, and come near to the prom- 
ised land of peace, into which he might not pass over. 
Who shall recount our martyr's sufferings for this people ! 
Since the November of i860, his horizon has been black 
with storms. By day and by night he trod a way of 
danger and darkness. On his shoulders rested a govern- 
ment dearer to him than his own life. At its integrity 
millions of men at home were striking: upon it foreign 
eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in a sea full of 
storms; and every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. 
Upon thousands of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have 
rested, but not on one, such, and in such measure, as upon 
that simple, truthful, noble soul, our faithful and sainted 
Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impas- 
sioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with 
the mercurial in hours of defeat to the depths of despond- 
ency, he held on with unmovable patience and fortitude, 
putting caution against hope that it might not be prema- 
ture, and hope against caution that it might not yield to 
dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four 



\ 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 703 

black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was 
cleansing the sins of his people as by fire. 

At last the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the coun- 
try. The mountains began to give forth their forms from 
out of the darkness; and the East came rushing toward us 
with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for 
him to be glad exceedingly, that had sorrowed immeasura- 
bly. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy, such 
rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he looked 
upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. 

Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone 
from among us. 

Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul ! Thou 
hast indeed entered into the promised land, while we are 
yet on the march. To us remain the rocking of the deep, 
the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watch- 
ing; but thou art sphered high above all darkness and fear, 
beyond all sorrow and weariness. Rest, O weary heart ! 
Rejoice exceedingly, thou that hast enough suffered ! 
Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee in this great 
wilderness. Thoil standest among the elect. Around thee 
are the royal men that have ennobled human life in every 
age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem. 
And joy is upon thee forevermore. Overall this land, over 
all the little cloud of years that now from thine infinite hori- 
zon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as a 
star is above the clouds, that hide us but never reach it. 
In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that 
rest which thou hast sorrowing sought here in vain; and thy 
name, an everlasting name in heaven, shall flourish in fra- 
grance and beauty as long as men shall last upon the earth, 
or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity, and goodness. 

Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemi- 
sphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this 
land. The joy of final victory was as sudden as if no man 
had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a 
sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept 
business from its moorings, and ran down through the 
land in irresistible course. Men embraced each other in 



704 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, 
or prayed, or, deeper yet, many could only think thanks- 
giving and weep gladness. That peace was sure; that our 
government was firmer than ever; that the land was 
cleansed of plague; that the ages were opening to our 
footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings; that 
blood was staunched, and scowling enmities were sinking 
like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, 
nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled 
honor among the nations of the earth, — these thoughts, and 
that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and 
desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings 
like the heated air of midsummer days, — all these kindled 
up such a surge of joy as no words may describe. 

In one hour, under the blow of a single bereavement, joy 
lay without a pulse, without a gleam, or breath. A sorrow 
came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep 
through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, 
disheveling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket 
or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the 
land and upon the mountains. Did ever* so many hearts, 
in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings ? It 
was the uttermost of joy; it was the uttermost of sorrow; 
— noon and midnight without a space between ! 

The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible 
that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men 
awakened at midnight by an earthquake, and bewildered 
to find everything that they were accustomed to trust 
wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. 
The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight 
to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after 
some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one 
to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if 
each would ask the other, " Am I awake, or do I dream ? " 
There was a piteous helplessness. Strong men bowed 
down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to 
some one in chief; this belonged to all. It was each and 
every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as 
if its firstborn were gone. Men were bereaved, and walked 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 705 

for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their dwellings. 
There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of 
nothing but that; and yet, of that they could speak only 
falteringly. All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot 
to smile. The great city for nearly a week ceased to roar. 
The huge Leviathan lay down and was still. Even avarice 
stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous 
sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monu- 
ments, found charitable institutions, and write his name 
above their lintels; but no monument will ever equal the 
universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a 
moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up ani- 
mosities, and in an hour brought a divided people into 
unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish. 

For myself, I cannot yet command that quietness of 
spirit needed for a just and temperate delineation of a 
man whom goodness has made great. Leaving that, if it 
please God, to some other occasion, I pass to some consid- 
erations aside from the martyr President's character which 
may be fit for this hour's instruction. 

And first, let us not mourn that his departure was so 
sudden, nor fill our imagination with horror at its method. 
Men, long eluding and evading sorrow, when at last they 
are overtaken by it seem enchanted and seek to make their 
sorrow sorrowful to the very uttermost, and to bring out 
every drop of suffering which they possibly can. This is 
not Christian, though it may be natural. When good men 
pray for deliverance from sudden death, it is only that they 
may not be plunged without preparation, all disrobed, into 
the presence of their Judge. When one is ready to depart 
suddenness of death is a blessing. It is a painful sight to 
see a tree overthrown by a tornado, wrenched from its foun- 
dations, and broken down like a weed; but it is yet more 
painful to see a vast and venerable tree lingering with vain 
strife against decay, which age and infirmity have marked 
for destruction. The process by which strength wastes, 
and the mind is obscured, and the tabernacle is taken 
down, is humiliating and painful; and it is good and grand 
when a man departs to his rest from out of the midst of 

45 



7o6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

duty, full-armed and strong, with pulse beating time. For 
such an one to go suddenly, if he be prepared to go, is but 
to terminate a most noble life in its most noble manner. 
Mark the words of the Master: — 

" Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning ; and 
ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will 
return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, 
they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants 
whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching." 

Not they that go in a stupor, but they that go with all 
their powers about them, and wide-awake, to meet their 
Master, as to a wedding, are blessed. He died watching. 
He died with his armor on. In the midst of hours of labor, 
in the very heart of patriotic consultations, just returned 
from camps and counsels, he was stricken down. No fever 
dried his blood. No slow waste consumed him. All at 
once, in full strength and manhood, with his girdle tight 
about him, he departed; and walks with God. 

Nor was the manner of his death more shocking, if we 
divest it of the malignity of the motives which caused it. 
The mere instrument itself is not one that we should 
shrink from contemplating. Have not thousands of sol- 
diers fallen on the field of battle by the bullets of the 
enemy ? Is being killed in battle counted to be a dreadful 
mode of dying? It was as if he had died in battle. Do 
not all soldiers that must fall ask to depart in the hour of 
battle and of victory? He went in the hour of victory. 

There has not been a poor drummer-boy in all this war 
that has fallen for whom the great heart of Lincoln would 
not have bled; there has not been one private soldier, with- 
out note or name, slain among thousands and hid in the 
pit among hundreds, without even the memorial of a sepa- 
rate burial, for whom the President would not have wept. 
He was a man from the common people that never forgot 
his kind. And now that he who might not bear the march, 
and the toil, and the battle with these humble citizens has 
been called to die by the bullet, as they were, do you not 
feel that there was a peculiar fitness to his nature and life 
that he should in death be joined with them in a final 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 7°; 

common experience to whom he had been joined in all his 
sympathies ? 

For myself, when any event is susceptible of a higher 
and nobler garnishing, I know not what that disposition is 
that should seek to drag it down to the depths of gloom, 
and write it all over with the scrawls of horror or fear. I 
let the light of nobler thoughts fall upon his departure, 
and bless God that there is some argument of consolation 
in the matter and manner of his going, as there was in the 
matter and manner of his staying. 

Then, again, this blow was but the expiring rebellion. 
As a miniature gives all the form and features of its sub- 
ject, so, epitomized in this foul act, we find the whole nat- 
ure and disposition of slavery. It begins in a wanton 
destruction of all human rights, and in a desecration of all 
the sanctities of heart and home; and it is the universal 
enemy of mankind, and of God, who made man. It can 
be maintained only at the sacrifice of every right moral 
feeling in its abettors and upholders. I deride him who 
points me to any one bred amidst slavery, believing in it, 
and willingly practising it, and tells me that he is a man. I 
shall find saints in perdition sooner than I shall find true 
manhood under the influences of so accursed a system as 
this. It is a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, violently 
destroying manhood in the oppressed, and insidiously 
destroying manhood in the oppressor. The problem is 
solved, the demonstration is completed in our land. 
Slavery wastes its victims, and it destroys the masters. It 
kills public morality, and the possibility of it. It corrupts 
manhood in its very center and elements. Communities 
in which it exists are not to be trusted. They are rotten. 
Nor can you find timber grown in this accursed soil of 
iniquity that is fit to build our Ship of State, or lay the 
foundation of our households. The patriotism that grows 
up under this blight, when put to proof, is selfish and brit- 
tle; and he that leans upon it shall be pierced. The honor 
that grows up in the midst of slavery is not honor, but a 
bastard quality that usurps the place of its better, only to 
disgrace the name of honor. And, as long as there is con- 



7o8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

science, or reason, or Christianity, the honor that slavery- 
begets will be a by-word and a hissing. The whole moral 
nature of men reared to familiarity and connivance with 
slavery is death-smitten. The needless rebellion; the 
treachery of its leaders to oaths and solemn trusts; their 
violation of the commonest principles of fidelity, sitting 
in senates, in councils, in places of public confidence only 
to betray and to destroy; the long, general, and unparal- 
leled cruelty to prisoners, without provocation, and utterly 
without excuse; the unreasoning malignity and fierceness, 
— these all mark the symptoms of that disease of slavery, 
which is a deadly poison to soul and body. 

I do not say that there are not single natures, here and 
there, scattered through the vast wilderness which is cov- 
ered with this poisonous vine, who escaped the poison. 
There are; but they are not to be found among the men 
that believe in it, and that have been molded by it. They 
are the exceptions. Slavery is itself barbarity. That na- 
tion which cherishes it is barbarous; and no outside tinsel 
or glitter can redeem it from the charge of barbarism. 
And it was fit that its expiring blow should be such as to 
take away from men the last forbearance, the last pity, and 
fire the soul with an invincible determination that the 
breeding-ground of such mischiefs and monsters shall be 
utterly and forever destroyed. 

We needed not that he should put on paper that he be- 
lieved in slavery, who, with treason, with murder, with 
cruelty infernal, hovered around that majestic man to de- 
stroy his life. He was himself but the long sting with 
which slavery struck at liberty; and he carried the poison 
that belonged to slavery. As long as this nation lasts, 
it will never be forgotten that we have had one martyred 
President — never ! Never, while time lasts, while heaven 
lasts, while hell rocks and groans, will it be forgotten that 
slavery, by its minions, slew him, and in slaying him made 
manifest its whole nature and tendency. 

But another thing for us to remember is that this blow 
was aimed at the life of the government and of the na- 
tion. Lincoln was slain; America was meant. The man 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 709 

was cast down; the government was smitten at. It was 
the President who was killed. It was national life, breath- 
ing freedom and meaning beneficence, that was sought. 
He, the man of Illinois, the private man, divested of robes 
and the insignia of authority, representing nothing but his 
personal self, might have been hated; but that would not 
have called forth the murderer's blow. It was because he 
stood in the place of government, representing govern- 
ment and a government that represented right and liberty, 
that he was singled out. 

This, then, is a crime against universal government. It 
is not a blow at the foundations of our government, more 
than at the foundations of the English government, of the 
French government, of every compacted and well-organ- 
ized government. It was a crime against mankind. The 
whole world will repudiate and stigmatize it as a deed 
without a shade of redeeming light. For this was not the 
oppressed, goaded to extremity, turning on his oppressor. 
Not even the shadow of a cloud of wrong has rested on 
the South, and they know it right well. 

In a council held in the city of Charleston, just preced- 
ing the attack on Fort Sumter, two commissioners were 
appointed to go to Washington; one on the part of the 
army from Fort Sumter, and one on the part of the Con- 
federates. The lieutenant that was designated to go for 
us said it seemed to him that it would be of little use for 
him to go, as his opinion was immovably fi.xed in favor of 
maintaining the government in whose service he was 
employed. Then Governor Pickens took him aside, de- 
taining, for an hour and a half the railroad train that was 
to convey them on their errand. He opened to him the 
whole plan and secrets of the Southern conspiracy, and 
said to him, distinctly and repeatedly (for it was needful, 
he said, to lay aside disguises), that the South had never 
been wronged, and that all their pretenses of grievance in 
the matter of tariffs, or anything else, were invalid. " But," 
said he, " we must carry the people with us; and we allege 
these things, as all statesmen do many things they do not 
believe, because they are the only instruments by which 



7IO PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the people can be managed." He then and there declared 
that it had simply come to this: that the two sections of 
country were so antagonistic in ideas and policies that 
they could not live together; that it was foreordained that, 
on account of differences in ideas and policies, Northern 
and Southern men must keep apart. This is testimony 
which was given by one of the leaders in the Rebellion, 
and which will probably, ere long, be given under hand 
and seal to the public. So the South has never had wrongs 
visited upon it except by that which was inherent in it. 

This was not, then, the avenging hand of one goaded 
by tyranny. It was not a despot turned on by his victim. 
It was the venomous hatred of liberty wielded by an 
avowed advocate of slavery. And, though there may 
have been cases of murder in which there were shades of 
palliation, yet this murder was without provocation, with- 
out temptation, without reason, sprung from the fury of a 
heart cankered to all that was just and good, and corrupted 
by all that was wicked and foul. 

The blow, however, has signally failed. The cause is not 
stricken; it is strengthened. This nation has dissolved — 
but in tears only. It stands, four-square, more solid, to- 
day, than any pyramid in Egypt. This people are neither 
wasted, nor daunted, nor disordered. Men hate slavery 
and love liberty with stronger hate and love to-day than 
ever before. The Government is not weakened, it is made 
stronger. How naturally and easily were the ranks closed! 
Another stepped forward, in the hour that the one fell, to 
take his place and his mantle ; and I utter my trust that 
he will be found a man true to every instinct of liberty ; 
true to the whole trust that is reposed in him ; vigilant of 
the Constitution ; careful of the laws ; wise for liberty in 
that he himself, through his life, has known what it was to 
suffer from the stings of slavery, and to prize liberty from 
bitter personal experiences. 

Where could the head of government in any monarchy 
be smitten down by the hand of an assassin, and the funds 
not quiver nor fall one-half of one per cent.? After a long 
period of national disturbance, after four years of drastic 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 7H 

war, after tremendous drafts on the resources of the coun- 
try, in the height and top of our burdens, the heart of 
this people is such that now, when the head of govern- 
ment is stricken down, tlie public funds do not waver, but 
stand as the granite ribs in our mountains. Republican 
institutions have been vindicated in this experience as 
they never were before; and the whole history of the last 
four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems now in 
the providence of God to have been clothed with an illus- 
tration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a sig- 
nificance, such as we never could have expected or imag- 
ined. God, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, 
to all nations of the earth, " Republican liberty, based 
upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the 
globe." 

Even he who now sleeps has, by this event, been clothed 
with new influence. Dead, he speaks to men who now 
willingly hear what before they refused to listen to. Now, 
his simple and weighty words will be gathered like those 
of Washington, and your children and your children's 
children shall be taught to ponder the simplicity and deep 
wisdom of utterances which, in their time, passed, in the 
party heat, as idle words. Men will receive a new im- 
pulse of patriotism for his sake, and will guard with zeal 
the whole country which he loved so well: I swear you, 
on the altar of his memory, to be more faithful to the 
country for which he has perished. Men will, as they 
follow his hearse, swear a new hatred to that slavery 
against which he warred, and which in vanquishing him 
has made him a martyr and a conqueror: I swear you, 
by the memory of this martyr, to hate slavery with an 
unappeasable hatred. Men will admire and imitate his 
unmoved firmness, his inflexible conscience for the right; 
and yet his gentleness, as tender as a woman's, his mod- 
eration of spirit, which not all the heat of party could 
inflame, nor all the jars and disturbances of this country 
shake out of its place: I swear you to an emulation of 
his justice, his moderation and his mercy. 

You I can comfort; but how can I speak to that twilight 



712 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

million to whom his name was as the name of an angel of 
God ? There will be wailing in places which no ministers 
shall be able to reach. When, in hovel and in cot, in wood 
and in wilderness, in the field throughout the South, the 
dusky children, who looked upon him as that Moses whom 
God sent before them to lead them out of the land of bond- 
age, learn that he has fallen, who shall comfort them ? Oh, 
thou Shepherd of Israel, that didst comfort thy people of 
old, to thy care we commit the helpless, the long wronged, 
and grieved ! 

And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march,* 
mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at every 
stage of his coming. Cities and states are his pall-bearers, 
and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. 
Dead-^dead — dead — he yet speaketh ! Is Washington 
dead ? Is Hampden dead ? Is David dead ? Is any man 
dead that ever was fit to live ? Disenthralled of flesh, and 
risen to the unobstructed sphere where passion never 
comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is 
grafted upon the Infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly 
life can be. Pass on, thou that hast overcome ! Your 
sorrows, O people, are his peace ! Your bells, and bands, 
and muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and 
weep here; God makes it echo joy and triumph there. 
Pass on, thou victor ! 

Four years ago, O Illinois, we took from your midst an 
untried man, and from among the people; we return him 
to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the 
nation's; not ours, but the world's. Give him place, ye 
prairies ! In the midst of this great Continent his dust 
shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall make pil- 
grimage to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patri- 
otism. Ye winds, that move over the mighty places of the 
West, chant his requiem ! Ye people, behold a martyr, 
whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for 
fidelity, for law, for liberty ! 



*The funeral journey, conveying Lincoln's body from Washington to Illi- 
nois, was fourteen days in progress. He was buried on May 4, 1865. 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION.* 



" Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and 
called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." 
— I Sam. vii. 12. 



I READ, as a part of the opening services, a portion of the 
history from which I have selected this memorable sen- 
tence. 

For twenty years the ark of the covenant had been 
removed from Israel, and was in captivity. Then, by sig- 
nal interpositions of divine providence, it was recovered, 
and with victories which quite broke the power of the ene- 
mies of the ark and its God. The prophet and judge of 
Israel then declared, setting up a memorial and witness, 
" Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." It was a devout 
recognition of the interposition of God's providence in 
their behalf. 

If ever a people had occasion to say that, we ourselves 
now have ; and it would be a fitting thing for us if we were 
to set up again the corner-stone of the edifice of our lib- 
erty, and, making it a witness and a memorial, to write 
upon it " Eben-ezer " — Hitherto the Lord hath helped us. 

And that word was not only a grateful recognition of the 
past, but a hopeful view of the future. It was designed 
by the prophet to inspire hope and trust in the future by 
the witness of God's fidelity in the past. So also Christian 
men in this land ought to recognize God's hand in the past 
by a cheerful trust in regard to our future. Our difficulties 
are not ended. As long as nations or individuals live, there 

*Preached in Plymouth Church, October 29, 1S65, in the early stages of 
the debates over the restoration or reconstruction of the Southern States 
lately in rebellion, Andrew Johnson having been six months in the presi- 
dential chair as the successor of the murdered Lincoln. 



714 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

will be obstacles to be contested — and it is almost indis- 
pensable to vitality that it should be so. But what are our 
difficulties as compared with those through which we 
have triumphantly passed, — compared with those of four 
years ago; of three years ago; of two years ago; of even 
one year ago ? 

It is a remarkable fact that at no period hitherto has any 
statesman or leader appeared among us who, in view of 
coming dangers, has been able to lay down a plan, or a 
course of action. From the first, our whole horizon stood 
darkened by thick troubles. Question upon question, like 
ranks of trees in the forest, rose beyond each other; and 
there was no man who, before we reached them, could give 
a probable solution to them. Nor do I remember a single 
one of them that was solved in advance. Yet, it is a 
memorable fact that, as we drew near to one after another 
of these great difficulties which environed our people, we 
began to see specially, in each instance, how to overcome 
it. One by one our troubles were easily surmounted and 
left behind us. And as it has been in days past, so we 
have a right to believe it will be in days to come. We do 
not need to ask for a prophet's glass, that we may sweep 
the whole horizon and descry some way of escape. It is 
better to look back and see that to this people day by day 
has brought its difficulties and day by day has brought its 
deliverances. He that hath been our Help hitherto will be 
our Help in time to come; and it is unbecoming in us, in- 
dividually, and as a nation, after God's great manifesta- 
tions of mercy toward us, to indulge in one moment's 
doubt, or fear, or despondency. For despondency is in- 
gratitude, and hope in God is worship. 

I am impressed not only with the duty of hope and trust 
in God for the future, but with the duty of good-will 
toward men. Now that war has ceased from out of our 
midst, nothing can better crown its victories than a gener- 
ous and trustful spirit on the part of the citizens of this 
nation toward those that have been in error. And if I have 
not in past days been delinquent in the duty of defending 
liberty against the assaults of men; if I have not failed to 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 715 

be stern and persistent in my denunciations of that which 
was threatening and wrong; so now I am glad, on the 
other hand, to be early and equally persistent in advocating 
lenity, charity, sympathy, and, as far as I may in consist- 
ence with duty, forgetfulness. Hitherto, when slavery was 
a power in the land, and when the government was in the 
hands of men who hated its fundamental principles, true 
men in the North were obliged to be stern and unflinch- 
ing. There was no room permitted us for charity. Every 
single overture of charity was employed as an instrument 
for our destruction, and a witness for slavery. Now it is 
different; circumstances have changed; and if we are wise, 
we shall make haste to adapt ourselves to the new state of 
things, and perform now, though in a reverse manner, the 
duties which we sought hitherto to perform — then by op- 
position to the South; now by kindness toward them, and 
concord with them. 

In the first place, I cannot expect, nor ask you to expect, 
those that have been swept by this insanity (for I can 
scarcely regard the state of mind that has existed for years 
in the South as other than a political insanity) — I cannot 
expect, nor ask you to expect, that in one hour they will 
get over their enmities, their life-long prejudices and their 
humiliation. It would be easy for us to forgive men who 
were all that is lovely and beautiful; but when we infancy 
call them citizens and brothers, how often is our zeal of 
reconciliation checked by reading in the papers some hate- 
ful speech, or an account of some misbecoming conduct ! 
And how often do we find ourselves drawing back from 
the kindness that we had proposed to ourselves ! Now we 
are to remember that convalescence is often slower and 
longer than the run of the disease itself; and where men 
have been turmoiled, and torn, and revolutionized, it is 
demanding miracles to ask that in an hour, or a few days, 
they will sit clothed in their right mind at the feet of Jesus. 
And if there is to be anything like magnanimity, generos- 
ity, and true overtures of friendship, we must take men as 
they are. If we wait to have them become what we would 
have them to be, we shall wait in vain. Circumstances 



7i6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

will now compel Southern citizens to a course which will 
be safe for the Republic. They may act angrily; they 
may express ill-will; but they are now brought into a con- 
dition in which natural laws, stronger than human volitions 
or prejudices, will bend or overrule their wills. 

Nor are we to demand a surrender of theories and 
philosophies as a condition of confidence and trust. I per- 
ceive that men are dissatisfied because prominent leaders 
of the Rebellion are forgiven before they have shown any 
evidence of having relinquished the heresy of secession. 
I should have had less faith in them if they had. Under 
such circumstances it would have been said of them, 
"They were insincere in professing faith in their State doc- 
trines ; " or else it would have been said, " It was in the 
power of the sword to change their convictions " — neither 
of which would have been compatible with true manhood. 
All we have to ask is that they shall accept the fact and 
the future policy of Union. Let men say that secession 
ought to have been allowed — if they accept the fact that it 
is forever disallowed by the people of this continent. A 
man who believed in Calhoun's theories, and still believes 
them, may be a good citizen — just as one in England may 
be obedient to monarchical institutions, though he believes 
republican to be better. These theories, if let alone, will 
die out. The age and country is against them. The 
course of events refutes them. Old men may cherish 
them, but the young and ambitious will accept better doc- 
trines and wiser policies. 

Nor do I think it wise or Christian for us to distrust the 
sentiments of those in the South that profess to be desir- 
ous, once again, of concord and of union. It is said that 
they wish to get back to their old privileges and power, 
and that, when once they are reinstated, they will do as 
they please. But how do you propose to remedy that 
matter ? What kind of probation will you put States upon 
which will render it certain that, when they come back to 
the participation of national power, they will not do as 
they please ? You make a condition which in the nature 
of things cannot be fulfilled. Somewhere men are to be 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 717 

believed and trusted, or all possibility of co-operative gov- 
ernment is at an end. 

But it is said that we should receive guaranties for the 
future before we receive back men who have arrayed them- 
selves against the laws of the land. What guaranties ? 
How are we to secure them ? I think the best guaranty 
that can be given is the utter destruction of slavery. Men 
may make as many promises as they please, but they are 
under the influence of organic laws. Those great uncon- 
scious influences that are subtly touching men's interests, 
and the springs of thought and feeling — these are the 
things that in the long run determine conduct. Why was 
the North valid, healthful ? Because her laws and institu- 
tions promoted freedom and the doctrines of liberty. It 
was not because we were by nature more virtuous than the 
people of the South ; but we were under the influence of 
great organic laws that were inciting us to conduct which 
was wiser and better than we individually knew or pur- 
posed. We were dependent upon the wisdom of our 
great political institutions for making us what we were. 
And they of the South, on the other hand, were uncon- 
sciously under the influence of great organic laws which 
sprang from radically vicious institutions. They were 
made what they were by certain theories of political 
economy, carried out practically. So that they answered 
logically to the influences of those institutions under 
which they were reared, as we answered logically to the 
influences of those institutions under which we were 
reared. It was the antagonism which existed between 
their institutions and ours that brought us in perpetual 
collision with them. The giving to all men equal rights, 
and the holding men in slavery, could not harmonize. 
Free labor meeting slave-labor ; free speech meeting muz- 
zled speech; a free press meeting a hampered press, could 
not but lead to conflict. It was the necessities of Southern 
institutions which collided with the necessities of Northern 
institutions. The people of the South were what they 
were, not by reason of voluntary wickedness, but by reason 
of the institutions that were behind them, and that pushed 



7l8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

them forward, as tides push ships; and our excellence was 
attributable not so much to ourselves as to the pressure of 
the great laws and institutions under which we were 
acting. 

Now, slavery being destroyed, the cause of collision is 
removed; and, though a longer or shorter time may be re- 
quired to readjust the state of things, once let labor stand 
free in the South, once let there be no necessity for muz- 
zling speech, once let there be no need for hampering the 
press, once let commerce be unrestricted, once let the 
heathen laws on Southern statute-books be destroyed, and 
what guaranty do you want that free men, pursuing free 
labor, will not fight other free men pursuing free labor ? 
The only cause of antagonism was slavery; and, now that 
slavery is destroyed, there is no ground for conflict. We 
do not come into collision with Canada, although she is 
under a crown. Still less do we come into collision with 
the States of the West. And why should we come into 
collision with the States of the South, except on account 
of differences between their institutions and ours? Thus 
the taking away of difference is everything that we want. 
Of all guaranties for the future harmony of the North and 
the South, the best is the effectual extermination of slavery. 
A guaranty of words may be very well, but a guaranty of 
facts is better. 

It is said that there should be a spirit of humility on the 
part of the South, that there should be the appearance of 
their having been convinced of the error of their ways, be- 
fore we receive them back. It is said that God does not 
receive sinners back till they are humbled. 

When you are God you need not receive your brethren 
back till they are humbled. But I take it that you are not 
in the place of God. There are many who desire to see 
the South humbled. For my own part, I think it to be the 
great need of this nation to save the self-respect of the 
South. I think that he will be the wisest and most politic 
statesman who knows how to carry them through this ter- 
rible and painful transition with the least sacrifice of their 
pride, and with the greatest preservation of their self-re- 



COXDITWNS OF A RESTORED UNION. 7^9 

spect; and if it can be done b)'- the generosity of the North, 
a confidence will spring up at the South in the future that 
will repay us for the little self-sacrifice that we may make. 
As for me, I would go backward and throw the mantle over 
their nakedness, and extend to them trust and help, till 
they should recover themselves and again stand erect in 
the full manhood of a common American citizenship. I 
do not wish to see the South humbled any more than War 
has humbled them. Stripped, peeled, they have been. But 
that is not all. Oh, what woe is theirs ! Not a father or 
mother among them can mourn for a slain son, not a wife 
can mourn for a husband slain, not a sister can mourn for 
a brother, not a man or woman can mourn for a friend, 
with any other feeling than this: "He threw away his 
life for nothing ! " Thrice ten thousand loved ones have 
we sacrificed; but they were martyrs for liberty, and their 
names and deeds are fragrant in our memory, and we glory 
in our sorrow ! But the wailing of the people of the South 
concerning those that they sacrificed is, " They perished in 
a cause that itself perished, and there is no memorial of 
them ! " Their property is gone, their States are in 
anarchy, their firesides are left desolate; and do I hear 
men saying, " Before we receive them back let them be 
still further humbled ? " Oh, my brother, you know not 
what manner of spirit you are of ! 

I am anxious that those who have hitherto been most 
active for liberty and humanity should produce the first 
and deepest impression on our brethren in the South by 
real kindness; and I am very thankful that those who have 
been representative men in the North, in the main — Gerritt 
Smith, Mr. Garrison, and others such as they — have been 
found pleading for lenity, and opposed to rigor and un- 
charitableness. That is as it should be. And I shall be 
greatly rejoiced if those men who have been in favor of 
liberty, and in conflict with the South, shall be the first, in 
the interest of liberty and humanity, to express toward the 
Southern people sympathy and generous trust. On the 
other hand, I shall regard it as peculiarly unfortunate if it 
shall take place that the patriotic and good shall stand 



720 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

coldly waiting, or sternly demanding justice, while those 
men that for five years have betrayed both the North and 
the South, make haste to hold out warm hands of greet- 
ing, and produce the impression that they are alone the 
friends of the South. Let the true men find the Southern 
heart, and let traitors be disallowed by both parties. 

I cannot read except with disapprobation much that is 
written now in regard to the condition of things in the 
South. An honest statement of facts is fair: but biting 
criticisms on men and their actions cannot but produce evil 
results. I have deemed unwise the many criticisms that 
were passed upon General Lee when he assumed the 
Presidency of Washington College. When his history is 
impartially written, it can never be covered up that in an 
hour of great weakness he committed himself wickedly to 
the cause of rebellion. This is a blemish on his name that 
cannot well be effaced. But I cannot deny that since that 
time his course and career, from his stand-point, have been 
almost void of reproach. The great crime of rebellion re- 
mains; but, it being assumed that he was conscientiously 
convinced that that was his duty, where can you find aught 
to criticise in his general conduct ? And when the war 
ceased, and he laid down his arms, who could have been 
more modest, more manly, more true to his own word and 
honor than he was ? And when he was called to the presi- 
dency of a college, must he not accept it ? Must he not 
do something for a living ? Might he not attempt to teach 
the minds of the South in the radical elements of educa- 
tion ? And was it wise and befitting that we at the North 
should raise caviling objections to his availing himself of 
this opportunity that was offered him of gaining an honor- 
able livelihood ? The real question is not of his fitness, 
but whether it is wise for us to deny to Virginians the 
risfht to select their own teachers. As far as I am con- 
cerned, I was glad that he accepted the position; and I 
have reason to believe that the young men who are grad- 
uated under him, even though they were deficient on some 
points of political education, will be true and faithful to 
the government that they are to live under. Robert Lee 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 721 

is the last man in the South ever again to rebel or incite 
rebellion. And I tell you we are not making friends, nor 
helping the cause of a common country, by raising the 
names of eminent Southern men, one after another, into 
the place of bitter criticism. It is not generous. We are 
the stronger party; we have been successful: and if there 
is to be magnanimity anywhere, we are the men to show it. 

The two great questions which now are unfolding into 
practical policies, and which attract the thoughtful regard 
of all men that think upon public affairs, are: first, the ad- 
mission of Southern States a-gain to the participation in 
our national government; and, secondly, the complete and 
permanent restoration to the black men of our country of 
their rights. 

Let us look, then, at these two main questions of the 
future. 

I. It is desirable, on every account, that the South should 
be restored at the earliest practicable moment to a partici- 
pation in our common government. It is best for us; it is 
best for them. It is foreign to our American ideas that 
men should be dispossessed of civil rights, if we expect 
to treat them in any other way than as criminals. If we 
expect to make citizens of them, and useful citizens, it is 
part and parcel of our American habits and doctrine that 
they shall be made so by an active participation in public 
affairs, which we hold to be not a luxury, but an education 
and a duty. 

But there are some considerations precedent. For it is 
not right that, in a moment, and without any sort of pledge 
or preparation or qualification, the men who were yester- 
day pointing the sword at the very throat of the govern- 
ment should have control of that government, or should be 
allowed to participate in its control. 

In the first place, the cause of our trouble must be de- 
stroyed; that which made the Southern States hate certain 
features of the Constitution and Government, and which 
brought them into perpetual collision with the free States, 
must be destroyed, as a part of their preparation for par- 
ticipation in the privileges which that Constitution and 
46 



722 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

that Government confer. It is right that State conventions 
should be required to abolish slavery, and to assist in the 
amendment of the Constitution of the United States in 
that regard, so that any State that might try to rejuvenate 
slavery should under the Constitution be unable to do it. 
I think this to be a sound and wise condition of their re- 
habilitation. 

Whatever may be done in the case of individuals, com- 
munities cannot be permitted to participate in the affairs 
of the government till they renounce forever their right to 
destroy it. For, stripped of all words, secession means the 
right of a part of the people living under a government to 
destroy that government. The South are now, by the 
fates of war, brought to our feet; and they ask to be our 
equals again, and to be allowed again to participate with 
us in the administration of the government; and certainly 
we have a right to say to them, " If you are to administer 
the government with us, you must swear not to attempt to 
destroy it." That is not humbling, and not very operose. 
And they must, in convention, not only annul their act of 
secession, but pronounce it to have been ah initio void. 
Thus must be set at rest all possibility of future secession 
and disunion. 

I think that, also, before the States of the South are re- 
instated, these conventions should have ascertained, and 
prescribed, and established, the condition of the freedman. 
They should have established, first, his right to labor, and 
to hold property, with all its concomitants. They should 
have established his right to labor as he pleases, where he 
pleases, and for whom he pleases, and to have sole and un- 
divided the proceeds of his own earnings, with the liberty 
to do with them as he pleases, just as any other citizen 
does. They should also have made him to be the equal of 
all other men before the courts and in the eye of the law. 
He should be just as much qualified to be a witness as the 
man that assaults him. He should be under the protec- 
tion of the laws, with all the opportunities of availing 
himself of their benefits which any other citizen has. It 
is one of the legitimate results of his emancipation that 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 723 

he should be put under the protection of the laws, and 
that he should have access to the courts, the same as any 
other man. 

I hold that it would have been wise, also, for these con- 
ventions to have given him the right of suffrage — for it is 
always inexpedient and foolish to deny a man his natural 
rights. And I yet stand on the ground that suffrage in 
our community is not a privilege, or a prerogative, but a 
natural right. That is to say, if there is any such thing as 
a natural right, a man has a natural right to determine the 
laws that involve his life, and liberty, and property. He 
has a right to have a voice in the election of those magis- 
trates who have to do with his whole civil prosperity. If 
the right to determine the laws and magistracies under 
which one exists is not a natural right, I know not what a 
natural right is. It is not giving the colored man a priv- 
ilege to allow him to vote: it is developing a long dor- 
mant natural right. He has a right to citizenship be- 
cause he is a man, unless he has forfeited it by crime. 
And I think it would have saved the land great prospective 
trouble to have promptly declared the right of the freed- 
men to labor and all its avails, to law and all its remedies, 
to citizenship and all its privileges. In our land liberty 
means citizenship. It is the right to self, to property, to 
law, and government, in each man and in all equally and 
alike. 

It is said that a declaration of the rights of citizenship 
is a declaration of social equality. You might as well say 
that the granting citizenship to a foreigner implies his 
right to share the property of those whose fellow-citizen 
he becomes. Declaring the colored man's right to citizen- 
ship in this country does not make him your equal socially. 
Do you suppose that you are all equal to each other in a 
social sense? Do you suppose that the Irishman who has 
just landed on our shores, who becomes a citizen, but to 
whom our ideas are foreign, instantly becomes our equal 
in a social point of view ? That is to say, the moment a 
man has the right to plead and be impleaded in our courts, 
the right to the fruits of his own labor, and the right to 



724 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

vote, do I rush into his arms and beg him to become my 
son-in-law, whether I like him or not ? What phantasies 
fill the brains of men ! How absurd is the idea, because I 
claim for the black man the right to be a man, the right to 
hold his earnings, the right to be a witness in our courts, 
and the right to vote, that therefore I am bound to like 
him, and to like him so much better than I like others as 
to make him my inseparable companion; and that I deem 
it wise and best for him to intermarry with the whites ! I 
have never seen the time when I desired black people and 
white people to intermarry. True, I have said, time and 
time again, that, if there was to be any intermingling, it 
ought to be under marriage, and not under concubinage; 
but that doctrine pro-slavery men have hitherto hated. 
They are not opposed to practical miscegenation. Their 
blood is disseminated on every plantation in the Southern 
States, as a result of the actual application of their doc- 
trine. The difference between them and us is, that they 
hold that there may be miscegenation, if only it is adulter- 
ous; while we declare that adultery is abhorrent to God, 
whether it be among whites or blacks, or both; and if 
there is to be intermingling, it should at least be wedlock. 
At the same time, we hold that it would better not be; and 
have held so from the beginning. Therefore, because I 
advocate the right of a black man to be free, to hold prop- 
erty, to claim the protection of the law, and to vote, I do 
not by any means hold that he is socially on a level with 
the man that is educated and refined, he not being edu- 
cated or refined. And there is nothing more preposterous 
than the confounding of these most obvious distinctions. 
With these provisions made by the conventions of the 
several States, guaranteeing the rights and the citizenship of 
the black man, I think that the difficulties would all speedily 
disappear, and that there would be no more questions 
to divide the people of the North and the South, so far as 
this subject is concerned. Without such provisions, much 
mischief will probably arise. It will be a trouble, how- 
ever, that will mainly affect the South. These four million 
men are not in our midst. For the most part, they are in 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 725 

the South; and I may say that we are disinterested in 
pleading for their complete emancipation and enfranchise- 
ment; for, if they are wronged, and there are consequent 
uprisings and strifes, it will be there that those things will 
take place — not here. In their own bowels will be the 
cramps and colics — not in ours ! 

In regard to this matter, I do not know what the Presi- 
dent's* mind is — if he knows it himself ! Much complaint 
has been made of his reticence. But it is one of the best 
things that can be said of a man, that, when he has noth- 
ing to say, he says nothing. I apprehend, however, in the 
light of certain things that he said in his conference with 
the committee from the convention of South Carolina — 
South Carolina, a State which, whatever you may say of 
it, must always be considered as a State singularly diffi- 
dent and modest ! — the State that, before she had been re- 
ceived back into the Union, before she knew that she stood 
on her feet at all, unwashed, uncombed, and unrobed, sent 
a committee to advise the government what to do, thus af- 
fording a striking illustration of that itch of ruling to 
which she has been subject; — I apprehend, in the light of 
certain things that he said in his conference with this com- 
mittee, that the President has given the key to his policy. 
You will recollect this remark, which he made in that in- 
terview: "We must be practical, and come up to the 
surrounding circumstances." He does not weave theories 
or propound general principles; he takes the facts as they 
come to him, one by one, and determines each of them on 
its own merits. 

Of all the men that have occupied the presidential 
chair, not one, it seems to me, has displayed more wisdom 
in the solution of practical questions when brought before 
him, than has President Johnson thus far; and lam willing 
to trust him for the rest. I believe that, as one after 
another question comes up, he will be no less wise in solv- 
ing each than he has been in solving those that have al- 
ready presented themselves to him for solution. And the 



* Andrew Johnson. 



726 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

fact that he thinks many of the questions that arise had 
better be settled by Congress than by himself does not 
lessen my confidence in this wise magistrate. When you 
complain that many things should be precedent to the re- 
admission into the Union of the States of the South, you 
are to recollect that, while the President may advise and 
caution the Southern people, it is Congress that is to take 
the decisive steps. And it is better that the responsibility 
should be divided, than that the President should arrogate 
to himself the power of a czar, and determine questions 
absolutely and arbitrarily. 

Moreover, if on this subject of negro rights and suffrage 
he has done wrong, and the people of the South have done 
wrong — that is to say, if they have neglected that which 
is right, in connection with the conventions that have been 
held — we have a right to criticise their action, and to point 
out their faults; but I must admit that we of the North 
are not precisely in the attitude to rebuke the South in 
respect to the rights of the colored man. I do not think 
that our humanity has been such as to fit us to give un- 
qualified advice to our Southern brethren in that direction. 
When black men can ride without being insulted and 
ejected from our street-cars; when they can sit undisturbed 
in our sanctuaries; when they can work in shops with for- 
eigners without being vomited out; when they can vote as 
white men do, without any property or other qualification 
— then the Northern States may assume to rebuke the 
South on this subject. But I confess that, if I were to go 
South and preach to the people there of this duty, I should 
be obliged to preach in a very mild and general way, and 
not with severe criticism and objurgation, lest they should 
turn and say to me, " In what State were you born, 
sir ? " and I, with shame and confusion of face, should be 
obliged to say, " In Connecticut ! " 

As I have gone so far in speaking of the President, al- 
low me to go further and express my gratitude to God for 
that singular succession by which, after we had been led 
by Lincoln for four years through the great and terrible 
ordeal of war, and that martyred and noble man was 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 727 

taken suddenly, as it were by translation, God appointed, 
almost without our knowledge or forethought, one so well 
fitted to take up the work where it was left, and carry it 
on, without break or hindrance, to a successful accom- 
plishment. And, although I cannot undertake to say (it 
would be presumption in me to say it) that I endorse Mr, 
Johnson; although it is not safe for anyone to run before, 
and to promise much for the future; although I reserve 
my right to differ from him, and to criticise anything that 
may be hereafter developed in his policy, as any citizen 
may; yet, thus far, I do not now remember a single act of 
his administration which does not seem to me to have been 
wise, and just, and beneficial. The time when he was 
called to stand at the head of the nation was a most try- 
ing one. Perplexing questions were to be settled. Diffi- 
cult knots were to be untied. But he has taken up and 
untangled thread after thread of our national affairs; and, 
with a firm purpose, a skillful hand, and a clear head, he 
has gone on weaving that garment which is yet to cover 
the body of these States in a common brotherhood. I 
thank God for the eminent services and auspicious wisdom 
of Mr. Johnson. 

Nor can I point to anything that is more remarkable 
than that extraordinary unity of feeling which exists in 
the nation in respect to the general wisdom of the Presi- 
dent's course. That those citizens who called him from 
his relative obscurity because he was true to the cause of 
his country; that those who voted for him, and placed him 
in the position which he now occupies — that they should 
have confidence in him is not surprising. No man that 
voted for Mr. Johnson can well be otherwise than proud, 
in the main, of that man who was his candidate for Vice- 
President, and who now is President of the United States. 
But that which calls forth my admiration, and which ex- 
cites in me the profoundest gratitude, is that the men who 
hated him, and cursed him, and voted against him, are all 
converted, and have all adopted Mr. Johnson as their Presi- 
dent, and his policy as their policy ! So we are all one 
again ! There are no party lines now dividing the coun- 



728 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

try ! There is one great party and only one ! It is a mira- 
cle, and a miracle wrought in such a direction as to fill us 
with unqualified marvel, and with thanksgiving. I hope — 
I hope that these converts will not fall from grace ! 

I think I perceive in the President's mind a belief that 
all measures instituted under the Act of Emancipation for 
the blacks, in order to be permanently useful, must have 
the cordial consent of the wise and good citizens of the 
South. If it be so, I regard this judgment as indicative 
of the most sagacious statesmanship. I hold that it is not 
possible for us of the North, except in a remote way, to 
affect the condition of the black man in the South. We 
can send him material relief; we can give him the means 
of education; but in respect to his immediate condition, 
we cannot, removed at arm's-length, as we are, do much 
for him. And I do not think it consistent with the nature 
of our institutions for the Federal Government, in and of 
itself, to attempt permanently to take care of four millions 
of freedmen by military government. These men are 
scattered in fifteen States; they are living contiguous to 
their old masters; the kindness of the W'hite men in the 
South is more important to them than all the policies of 
the nation put together. And the best intentions of the 
Government will be defeated if the laws that are made 
touching this matter are such as are calculated to excite 
the animosity and hatred of the white people in the South 
toward the black people there. I except the single degree 
of emancipation. That must stand, though men dislike it. 
A true and wise statesmanship consists in conciliating the 
late masters, and persuading them to accept the freedmen 
in a spirit of kindness and helpfulness. Calling names, 
suspecting motives, objurgations, will not help the black 
man. President Johnson thinks it better that the colored 
people should receive their rights with the consent of the 
South; and he waits for it, and influences rather than com- 
mands; and I think he is acting with enlightened judgment. 

This view I found upon another part of his remarks 
which were addressed to the modest committee from South 
Carolina: — 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 729 

"The President thought many of the evils would disappear if 
they inaugurated the right system. Pass laws protecting the 
colored man in his person and property, and he can collect his 
debts. He knew how it was with the South. The question, when 
first presented, of putting a colored man on the witness stand, 
made them shrug their shoulders. But the colored man's testi- 
mony was to be taken for what it was worth by those who ex- 
amined him, and the jury who heard it. After all, there was not 
so much danger in this as was supposed. Those coming out of 
slavery cannot do without work ; they cannot lie down in dissipa- 
tion ; they must work ; they ought to understand that liberty 
means simply the right to work and enjoy the products of labor, 
and that the laws protect them. That being done, and when we 
come to the period to feel that men must work or starve, the 
country will be prepared to receive a system applicable to both 
white and black — prepared to receive a system necessary to the 
case. A short time back you could not enforce the vagrant law 
on the black, but could on the white man. But get the public 
mind right, and you can treat both alike. Let us get the general 
principles right, and the details and collaterals will follow." 

Is not that wise ? Ts not that sound ? Many men feared 
that the President, being a Southern-born man, would be 
warped toward the South. I thank God that he is a 
Southern-born man. It is just such a man that we need, 
if we are going to reconstruct. You cannot build up 
confidence as you can masonry. The work is not one in 
which all that is required is stone here, and mortar there. 
He that manages the human heart has, it may be, to work 
against ignorance, and against ten thousand prejudices; 
and he must himself have a sensitive heart. And a New 
England man in the President's chair, even if he were 
wiser than Mr. Johnson, would not have that natural sym- 
pathetic feeling for the Southern people which would fit 
him, as President Johnson is fitted, for the peculiar duties 
which devolve upon the Chief Magistrate of the nation at 
this time. He is of the South. He knows the weaknesses 
of the Southern people, and their good qualities; and he 
will be tender and kind with them. I am not afraid that 
he will betray one single Christian principle on account of 
this sympathy. So far from that, his sympathy will get 



73° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

hold of the hearts of the white men of the South, in a 
manner that will go far toward winning them back to a 
better way. It is the period of winning and conciliation. 
War has done its work: and now we are to deal with men 
by the affections, by reason, and by conscience; and I think 
God has ordained this man to do that much needed work. 
On the whole, I believe in him. 

II. I must say a few words in respect to the black man, 
and his condition, and our duties toward him. For this 
is the great question which is unrolling itself, and which 
God, in his providence, is giving us to consider. 

I never was more surprised than in reading the speech 
of a late member of the Cabinet with regard to the dispo- 
sition of the black race. Looking at it in the light of the 
present times, and of the nature of the doctrines of our 
government, this in many respects acute, ingenious, and 
certainly patriotic man can find but one solution for this 
great question. What does he propose to do ? He pro- 
poses to take four millions of men and tear them up by 
the roots, and transport them out of the country, and so 
get rid of them. He declares that it is impossible for the 
blacks and whites to live together, and that there is no 
way of meeting the difficulty but by appropriating terri- 
tory to which they shall be sent and left to govern them- 
selves. Now, you may carry vagrant tribes of Indians 
from one place to another. They are venatorial in their 
habits. They are not agricultural. Nor have they such 
social connections as the colored people have in the South. 
It is possible to put Indian tribes on a certain territory, 
and keep them there. But the African is entirely different 
from the Indian — as different as the vine is from the bam- 
boo. A bamboo grows without a tendril from top to bot- 
tom, and does not touch anything; and that is the way the 
Indian grows. The vine, as it grows, throws tendrils out 
on every side, at every point, and in every direction. It 
clasps and leans upon everything that it can reach. And 
so it is with the Africans. They do not live in tribes or 
communities by themselves. They clasp the white people. 
They like to live in white families. They are so inter- 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 731 

mingled with the whites that if, according to Mr. Blair, 
you attempt to root up the tares, you will root up the 
wheat also. You cannot empty the South of this African 
element without destroying it from the foundation. 

And is this a time, when the great want of the South is 
laborers, and when she is asking Sweden and Denmark, 
and Germany, and France, and England, and Ireland, to 
pour their laboring population into her desolated States — 
is this a time for her to take her own practiced and 
healthy laborers in her pestilential morasses, and banish 
them to the Western prairies ? It is one of the most pre- 
posterous theories ever announced outside of a lunatic 
asylum. And think of this proposition being made to a 
Christian people ! When we are called, in the providence 
of God, to instruct these poor, despised creatures in whose 
behalf Christ was born, to bear their burdens, and to raise 
them l)y the refining power of Christianity to the level of 
a true manhood, the counsel that comes to us from Mary- 
land is, " Sneak out of your duties; shirk your cross; say 
to these heathen among you, Begone ! Tramp ! Get 
out ! " Such is the fulfillment of duty that is held up be- 
fore us ! And it is proposed to American citizens ! Why, 
I believe that even our foreign citizens would resent an 
appeal like this, though they are the worst disposed of our 
population toward the colored race. 

What, then, is our Christian duty ? We are, as far as in 
us lies, to prepare the black man for his present condition, 
and for his future, in the same way that we prepare the 
white man for his. And I think it should be a joint work. 
I do not think it would be wise for the North to pour min- 
isters, and colporteurs, and schoolmasters into the South, 
making a too marked distinction between the black people 
and the white. We ought to carry the Gospel and educa- 
tion to the whites and blacks alike. Our heart should be 
set toward our country and all its people, without distinc- 
tion of caste, class, or color. It is our business to use our 
wealth to meet the present emergencies and exigencies of 
the South, to supply it with food and raiment; but we are 
also to do in respect to it as we do in respect to ourselves. 



732 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Where we are personally concerned, we never trust any- 
thing to accident or chance. We hold that the only way 
to keep society from retrograding is to preserve our in- 
stitutions; we hold that nothing can keep us from running 
to waste but the common-school, the academy, the college, 
the church, and the family; and we are to carry the com- 
mon-school, the academy, the college, and the church to 
every State in the South. We are to educate the negroes, 
and to Christianly educate them. We are to raise them 
in intelligence more and more, until they shall be able to 
prove themselves worthy of citizenship. For, I tell you, 
all the laws in the world cannot bolster a man up so as to 
place him any higher than his own moral worth and nat- 
ural forces put him. You may pass laws declaring that 
black men are men, and that they are our equals in social 
position; but, unless you can make them thoughtful, in- 
dustrious, self-respecting, and intelligent; unless, in short, 
you can make them what you say they have a right to be, 
those laws will be in vain. 

We have, then, a heavy work before us. We have a 
work that will tax our faith, and patience, and resources. 
But it is a work which we may pursue, believing that 
He who hath brought us thus far in it will carry us 
through to the end. We raise our Eben-ezer, and say, 
"The Lord hath helped us." And as he has helped us in 
the past by war, in respect to this great people that were 
in bondage, and laden with its vices and sins, so he will 
help us still in our Christian work of preparing them for 
that liberty which has been so strangely brought to their 
very door. And I am satisfied that, while we ought to 
claim for the colored man the right to the elective fran- 
chise, you never will be able to secure it and maintain it 
for him, except by making him so intelligent that men 
cannot deny it to him. You cannot long, in this country, 
deny to a man any civil right for which he is manifestly 
qualified. And if the colored man is industrious, and ac- 
cumulates property, and makes a wise use of that prop- 
erty, you cannot long withhold from him his civil rights. 
We ought to demand universal suffrage, which is the 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 733 

foundation element of our American doctrine; yet I de- 
mand many things in theory which I do not at once ex- 
pect to see realized in practice. I do not at once expect 
to see universal suffrage in the South; but if the Southern 
people will not agree to universal suffrage, let it be under- 
stood that there shall be a property and educational quali- 
fication. Let it be understood that men who have acquired 
a certain amount of property, and can read and write, 
shall be allowed to vote. I do not think that the posses- 
sion of property is a true condition on which to found the 
right to vote; but as a transition step I will accept it, when 
I would not accept it as a final measure. It is a good 
initial, though not a good final. 

Further than that, I hold that no government that has 
self-respect, and no people that have humanity, can ever 
call three hundred thousand men to shoulder the musket 
and bare their bosom to death, and can be saved by the 
sprinkling of these men's blood, and then say to them, 
when the danger is past, " We have no further need of your 
services; go back again to your degradation." I believe, 
with Sherman, that the man who carries a musket in the 
defense of this government has a right afterward to carry 
a ballot. And it will be a shame, a burning shame, if this 
people permit those colored soldiers who fought for the 
maintenance of the integrity of this nation to go without 
the privilege of the ballot. I would be willing, for a 
beginning, to compromise on the ground of giving every 
soldier that served the cause of his country the right to 
vote. That right is given to foreigners now. And let the 
law give it to every soldier who is not a citizen, without 
distinction of color. And what will be the result? Give 
ten colored men in a parish at the South the right to vote, 
and equal suffrage will be a mere question of time. That 
will be the entering wedge. We want a beginning; and I 
would be willing, not as a finality, but as a stepping-stone 
to what I hope to get by and by, to take the suffrage for 
those colored men who bore arms in our late war for the 
salvation of this government. Now, I would like to see 
the man that professes to be a Democrat who is opposed to 



734 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

a soldier's voting. Where is the man who can look in the 
face of that black hero who has risked his life in the 
thunder of battle to preserve this country, and say, "You 
do not deserve to vote ? " The man who could do that is 
not himself fit to vote. He lacks the very first element of 
good citizenship. 

I know that there are many to whom this subject is un- 
welcome, and who say, " It seems as though there never 
would be an end of this negro agitation." There are many 
that say, " Ever since I was born I have breakfasted, and 
dined, and supped upon this Negro. He is in the pulpit, 
in conventions, in caucuses, everywhere ! " 

Well, why do you not suppress him ? I tell you, you 
will have to breakfast and dine and sup on this negro 
until you do him justice. Just as quick as you are willing 
to trust your own American principles, just as quick as you 
put in practice your own American doctrine that a// men 
are born free and equal, and have inalienable rights, he will sink 
out of notice as a vexation. He will not any longer obtrude 
himself in the pulpit, in conventions, or in caucuses. Just 
as quick as you will do right you will be delivered from 
the haunting of the negro; but as long as you will not, he 
will haunt you. 

But on another ground I have no sympathy with those who 
would fain have rest and quiet from such questions. I be- 
lieve that life is worth just what it effects. I believe that 
that man's life is valuable who produces results, and that 
that man's life is worthless who produces no results. And 
it is the way of God to agitate communities. There may be 
wrong agitations, or agitations may be out of proportion 
to the objects that they are designed to accomplish; but 
in every age, if there is wholesomeness, soundness, true 
life, God rolls questions on men that they are obliged to 
wake up to consider. Somnolent disciples, men that think 
of God as a great Soother, who fans them with the sweet 
perfumed gales of grace, while they snooze in the sanc- 
tuary, and sleep in their citizen's duties — such men have 
no part nor lot in God's real kingdom. For he holds a 
spear, and he pierces and penetrates with divine fervor 



CONDITIONS OF A RESTORED UNION. 735 

every one whom he toucheth. His fan is in his hand, and 
he will purge his floor, and preserve the wheat and burn 
the chaff; and the man that does not choose to be exer- 
cised, that is unwilling to work — let him die and go out of 
life; because this is a world of work, and the Christian's 
life is a line of duty. 

Enter upon your task, take up your cross, follow your 
Christ; and if you would rest, work; and if then you 
would rest, work again; and if then you would rest, die 
and rise to nobler work, in that land where there is no 
sleeping, where there is activity that knows no rest, when 
we have quit this mortal coil, and are pure spirits that 
have risen to the industries of God himself. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF THE 
SOUTHERN STATES. 



Two Letters, Written in 1866, upon being Invited to 

ACT AS Chaplain of the Soldiers' and Sailors' 

Convention held at Cleveland, Ohio. 



Published, with aft Introductory Postscript, in 1884, in 
pamphlet for?n. 



[POSTSCRIPT OF 1884.] 

I desire to give a permanent form to the two letters which were 
published in the autumn of 1866, or about eighteen years ago. 
The question of reconstruction of the seceding States was under 
discussion, and feeling ran high, not alone on account of the 
nature of the work to be done, but also by reason of the dis- 
turbed relations between President Johnson and Congress. 

President Lincoln had been assassinated, and Johnson had as- 
sumed his place. The statesmen whose vigor and courage had 
carried the country through the civil war were less adapted to 
the delicate task of restoring the discordant States to peace and 
unity than they had been to the sudden duties of war. 

In a general way there were two parties; one counseling a 
speedy readjustment, and the other, a longer probation. 

President Lincoln and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, in 
the last conversations which I had with them, inclined to the 
policy of immediate restoration ; and their views had great 
weight with me. It was in the interest of such a policy that a 
convention of Soldiers and Sailors was called, known by the 
name of the city where it was held as "The Cleveland Conven- 
tion." I was invited to act as its Chaplain, and the first- letter 
was my reply. 

Not many days after the convention, President Johnson began 
that ill-favored journey, known as "swinging around the circle," 



RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN STA TES. 737 

during the progress of which his temper, attitude, and injudi- 
cious speeches thoroughly alarmed the community. 

It was believed that he was betraying the country, and that all 
that had been gained by the war was about to be lost by the 
treachery of the President. 

The public mind was greatly inflamed, and my Cleveland letter 
was received with violent protests. Many personal friends and 
members of Plymouth Church were greatly exercised. To allay 
excitement by giving a fuller view of the ground of my first let- 
ter and to confute the idea that I had abandoned the Republi- 
can Party, I wrote the second letter, assuming the same position, 
but with explanatory reasoning. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Brooklyn, December, 1884. 



LETTER TO THE CONVENTION. 

Peekskill, N. Y., August 30, 1866. 

Chas. G. Halpine, Brevet Brig.-Gen., \ 

H. W. Slocum, Major-Gen., \ Committee. 

Gordon Granger, Major-Gen., ) 

Gentlemen : I am obliged to you for the invitation 
which you have made to me to act as Chaplain to the Con- 
vention of Sailors and Soldiers about to convene at Cleve- 
land. I cannot attend it, but I heartily wish it and all 
other conventions, of what party soever, success, whose 
object is the restoration of all the States late in rebellion 
to their federal relations. 

Our theory of government has no place for a State ex- 
cept in the Union. It is justly taken for granted that the 
duties and responsibilities of a State in federal relations 
tend to its political health and to that of the whole nation. 
Even Territories are hastily brought in, often before the 
prescribed conditions are fulfilled, as if it were dangerous 
to leave a community outside of the great body-politic. 

Had the loyal Senators and Representatives of Tennes- 
see been admitted at once on the assembling of Congress, 
47 



738 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

and, in moderate succession, Arlcansas, Georgia, Alabama, 
North Carolina, and Virginia, the public mind of the 
South would have been far more healthy than it is, and 
those States which lingered on probation to the last would 
have been under a more salutary influence to good con- 
duct than if a dozen armies had watched over them. 

Every month that we delay this healthful step compli- 
cates the case. The excluded population, enough unset- 
tled before, grows more irritable; the army becomes in- 
dispensable to local government and supersedes it; the 
Government at Washington is called to interfere in one 
and another difficulty, and this will be done inaptly, and 
sometimes with great injustice; for our Government, wisely 
adapted to its own proper functions, is utterly devoid of 
those habits, and unequipped with the instruments, which 
fit a centralized government to exercise authority in re- 
mote States over local affairs. Every attempt to perform 
such duties has resulted in mistakes which have excited 
the nation. But whatever imprudence there may be in 
the method, the real criticism should be against the requi- 
sition of such duties of the General Government. 

The Federal Government is unfit to exercise minor po- 
lice and local government, and will inevitably blunder 
when it attempts it. To keep a half score of States under 
Federal authority, but without national ties and responsi- 
bilities; to oblige the central authority to govern half of 
the territory of the Union by Federal civil officers and by 
the army, is a policy not only uncongenial to our ideas 
and principles, but pre-eminently dangerous to the spirit 
of our Government. However humane the ends sought 
and the motive, it is, in fact, a course of instruction, pre- 
paring our Government to be despotic; and familiarizing 
the people to a stretch of authority which can never be 
other than dangerous to liberty. 

I am aware that good men are withheld from advocat- 
ing the prompt and successive admission of the exiled 
States by the fear, chiefly, of its effect upon the freedmen. 

It is said that, if admitted to Congress, the Southern 
Senators and Representatives will coalesce with Northern 



RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN STA TES. 739 

Democrats and rule the country. Is this nation, then, to 
remain dismembered, to serve the ends of parties ? Have 
we learned no wisdom by the history of the past ten years, 
in which just this course of sacrificing the nation to the 
exigencies of parties plunged us into rebellion and war? 

Even admit that the power would pass into the hands 
of a party made up of Southern men and the hitherto dis- 
honored and misled Democracy of the North, that power 
could not be used just as they pleased. The war has 
changed, not alone institutions, but ideas. The whole 
country has advanced. Public sentiment is exalted far 
beyond what it has been at any former period. A new 
party would, like a river, be obliged to seek out its chan- 
nels in the already existing slopes and forms of the con- 
tinent. 

We have entered a new era of liberty. The style of 
thought is freer and more noble. The young men of our 
times are regenerated. The great army has been a school, 
and hundreds of thousands of men are gone home to 
preach a truer and nobler view of human rights. All the 
industrial interests of society are moving with increasing 
wisdom toward intelligence and liberty. Everywhere, in 
churches, in literature, in natural science, in physical in- 
dustries, in social questions, as well as in politics, the na- 
tion feels that the winter is over and a new spring hangs 
in the horizon and works through all the elements. In 
this happily changed and advanced condition of things 
no party of the retrograde can maintain itself. Every- 
thing marches, and parties must march. 

[I hear with wonder and shame and scorn the fear of a 
few that the South, once more in adjustment with the 
Federal Government, will rule this nation ! The North is 
rich, never so rich ; the South is poor, never before so 
poor. The population of the North is nearly double that 
of the South. The industry of the North, in diversity, in 
forwardness and productiveness, in all the machinery and 
education required for manufacturing, is half a century in 
advance of the South. Churches in the North crown 
every hill, and schools swarm in every neighborhood; 



74° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

while the South has but scattered lights, at long dis- 
tances, like light-houses twinkling along the edge of a 
continent of darkness. In the presence of such a contrast 
how mean and craven is the fear that the South will rule 
the policy of the land ! That it will have an influence, 
that it will contribute, in time, most important influences 
or restraints, we are glad to believe. But if it rises at 
once to the control of the Government it will be because 
the North, demoralized by prosperity and besotted by 
groveling interests, refuses to discharge its share of polit- 
ical duty. In such a case the South not only will control 
the Government, but it ought to do so. 

It is feared, with more reason, that the restoration of 
the South to her full independence will be detrimental to 
the freedmen. The sooner we dismiss from our minds the 
idea that the freedmen can be classified and separated 
from the white population, and nursed and defended by 
themselves, t4ie better it will be for them and us. The 
negro is part and parcel of Southern society. He cannot 
be prosperous while it is unprospered. Its evils will re- 
bound upon him. Its happiness and re-invigoration can- 
not be kept from his participation. The restoration of 
the South to amicable relations with the North, the re- 
organization of its industry, the re-inspiration of its en- 
terprise and thrift, will all redound to the freedman's ben- 
efit. Nothing is so dangerous to the freedman as an un- 
settled state of society in the South. On him comes all 
the spite, and anger, and caprice, and revenge. He will 
be made the scapegoat of lawless and heartless men. Un- 
less we turn the Government into a vast military ma- 
chine, there cannot be armies enough to protect the freed- 
men while Southern society remains insurrectionary. If 
Southern society is calmed, settled, and occupied, and 
soothed with new hopes and prosperous industries, no 
armies will be needed. Riots will subside, lawless hang- 
ers-on will be driven off or better governed, and a way 
will be gradually opened to the freedmen, through educa- 
tion and industry, to full citizenship, with all its honors 
and duties. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN STA TES. 741 

Civilization is a growth. None can escape that forty 
years in the wilderness who travel from the Egypt of igno- 
rance to the promised land of civilization. The freedmen 
must take their march. I have full faith in the results. 
If they have the stamina to undergo the hardships which 
every uncivilized people has undergone in its upward 
progress, they will in due time take their place among us. 
That place cannot be bought, nor bequeathed, nor gained 
by sleight of hand. It will come to sobriety, virtue, in- 
dustry, and frugality. As the nation cannot be sound 
until the South is prosperous, so, on the other extreme, a 
healthy condition of civil society in the South is indispen- 
sable to the welfare of the freedmen.] 

Refusing to admit loyal Senators and Representatives 
from the South to Congress will not help the freedmen. 
It will not secure for them the vote. It will not protect 
them. It will not secure any amendment of our Consti- 
tution, however just and wise. It will only increase the 
dangers and complicate the difficulties. Whether we re- 
gard the whole nation or any section of it or class in it, 
the first demand of our time is entire reunion ! 

Once united, we can, by schools, churches, a free press, 
and increasing free speech, attack every evil and secure 
every good. Meanwhile, the great chasm which rebellion 
has made is not filled up. It grows deeper and stretches 
wider ! Out of it rise dread specters and threatening 
sounds. Let that gulf be closed, and bury in it slavery, 
sectional animosity, and all strifes and hatreds ! 

It is fit that the brave men who, on sea and land, faced 
death to save this nation, should now, by their voice and 
vote, consummate what their swords rendered possible. 

For the sake of the freedmen, for the sake of the South 
and its millions of our fellow-countrymen, for our own 
sake, and for the great cause of freedom and civilization, 
I urge the immediate reunion of all the parts of this 
Union which rebellion and war have shattered. 
I am truly yours, 

Henry Ward Beecher. 



742 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

II. 

LETTER TO A PARISHIONER. 

Peekskill, Saturday, Sept. 8, 1866. 

My dear : I am obliged to you for your letter. 

I am sorry that my friends and my congregation are grieved 
by my Cleveland letter. 

This feeling, however, has no just grounds, whatever 
may be the seeming. I have not left, and do not propose 
to leave, or to be put out of, the Republican party. I am 
in sympathy with its aims, its great principles, and its army 
of noble men. But I took the liberty of criticising its 
policy in a single respect, and to do what I could to secure 
what I believed, and still believe, to be a better one. 

I am, and from the first have been, fully of opinion that 
the amendment of the Constitution, proposed by Congress, 
equalizing representation in Northern and Southern States, 
was intrinsically just and reasonable, and that it should be 
sought by a wholesome and persistent moral agitation. 

But, from the present condition of the public mind, and 
from the President's attitude, I deemed such a change to 
be practically impossible in any near period, by political 
action. And a plan of reconstruction based upon that 
seems to me far more like a plan of adjourning reconstruc- 
tion for years, at least, with all the liabilities of mischief 
which are always to be expected in the fluctuations of pol- 
itics in a free nation. 

[It is not the North that chiefly needs the restoration of 
government to its normal sphere and regular action. 
Either the advantages of Union are fallacious, or the con- 
tinuous exclusion of the South from it will breed disorder, 
make the future reunion more difficult, and especially sub- 
ject the freedmen to the very worst conditions of society 
that can well exist. No army, no government, and no 
earthly power can compel the South to treat four million 
men justly, if the inhabitants (whether rightly or wrongly) 



RECONSTRUCTION dp SOUTHERN STA TES. 743 

regard these men as the cause, or even the occasion, of 
their unhappiness and disfranchisement. But no army or 
government or power will be required when Southern 
society is restored, occupied, and prospering in the renewed 
Union. Then the negro will be felt to be a necessity to 
Southern industry, and interest will join with conscience 
and kindness in securing for him favorable treatment from 
his fellow-citizens. 

We that live at a distance may think that the social re- 
construction involved in the emancipation of four million 
slaves is as simple and easy as it is to discourse about it. 
But such a change is itself one of the most tremendous 
tests to which industry and society can be subjected, and 
to its favorable issue is required every advantage possible. 
The longer, therefore, the South is left in turmoil, the 
worse it will be for the negro. If there were no other rea- 
son; if the white population were not our fellow-citizens; 
if we had lost all kindness and regard for them and all 
pride for the Union, as in part represented by Southern 
States, and confined our attention exclusively to the negro, 
the case would be strong beyond my power of expression 
for an early resumption of federal relations with all the 
States. If this is to disregard the negro, then all social 
and natural laws have been studied in vain.] 

Neither am I a "Johnson man" in any received mean- 
ing of that term. I accept that part of the policy which 
he favors, but with modification. I have never thought 
that it would be wise to bring back all the States in a body, 
and at once, any more than it would be to keep them all 
out together. One by one, in due succession, under a 
special judgment, rather than by a wholesale theoretic 
rule, I would have them re-admitted. I still think a mid- 
dle course between the President's and that of Congress 
would be wiser than either. But^with this my agreement 
with the President ends. I have long regretted his igno- 
rance of Northern ideas and sentiments, and I have been 
astonished and pained at his increasing indiscretions. Un- 
consciously the President is the chief obstacle to the re- 
admission of Southern States. It is enough that he is 



744 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

known to favor a measure to set the public mind against 
it. This is to be deplored. But it is largely owing to his 
increasing imprudent conduct. I believe him to be honest, 
sincere in desiring what he regards as the public good, but 
slow and inapt in receiving help from other minds. Proud 
and sensitive, firm to obstinacy, resolute to fierceness, in- 
telligent in his own sphere, — which is narrow, — he holds his 
opinions inflexibly. He often mistakes the intensity of his 
own convictions for strength of evidence. 

Such a man has a true sphere in periods of peril, when 
audacious firmness and rude vigor are needed. But in the 
delicate tasks of adjustment which follow civil war, such 
a nature lacks that tact and delicacy and moral intuition 
which constitute the true statesman. 

Mr. Johnson's haste to take the wrong side at the atro- 
cious massacre of New Orleans was shocking. The per- 
version and mutilation of Sheridan's dispatches need no 
characterization. I do not attribute this act to him. Yet 
it was of such a criminal and disgraceful nature that not to 
clear himself of it by the exposure and rebuke of the offend- 
ing party amounted to collusion with crime after the fact. 
What shall I say of the speeches made in the wide recent cir- 
cuit of the Executive ? Are they the ways of reconciliation ? 

Yet Mr. Johnson is to be our President for nearly three 
years to come, clothed with a power that belongs to few 
thrones. Besides the honor which a people owe to him 
as the Chief Magistrate, we must, as Christian citizens, 
credit him with his real excellencies — his original horror 
of secession, his bold resistance to treachery, his persistent 
and self-denying heroism in the long, dark days of Ten- 
nessee. We must not forget that he has jealously resisted 
a centralization of power in the Federal Government; that 
he has sought to dignify and secure a true " State-rights; " 
that he has maintained simplicity of manners and a true 
sympathy with the common people. It is our duty, like- 
wise, to forestall and prevent, as much as possible, by 
kind but faithful criticism of his errors on the one hand, 
and by sympathy and kindness on the other, those dan- 
gers to which he is liable, under attacks which he is pecul- 



RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN STATES. 745 

iarly unable to bear with calmness, and those dangers of 
evil counselors, which more and more gravitate toward 
him. So long as it was possible, I have been silent upon 
Mr. Johnson's faults, and now speak so plainly, only lest I 
seem to approve or cloak them. 

And now allow me to express some surprise at the turn 
which the public mind has taken on my letter. If I had 
never before spoken my sentiments, I can see how friends 
might now misapprehend my position. But for a year 
past I have been advocating the very principles of the 
Cleveland letter in all the chief Eastern cities — in Boston, 
Portland, Springfield, Albany, Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, 
Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburg, and Brooklyn (at the 
Academy of Music, last winter). These views were re- 
ported, discussed, agreed to or differed from, praised and 
blamed abundantly. But no one thought, or at least said, 
that I remember, that I had forsaken the Republican party 
or had turned my back upon the freedman. My recent 
letter but condenses those views which for twelve months 
I have been earnestly engaged in urging upon the atten- 
tion of the community. I am not surprised that men dis- 
sent. But this sudden consternation and this late dis- 
covery of the nature of my opinions seem sufficiently 
surprising. I could not ask a better service than the re- 
printing of that sermon of last October, which first brought 
upon me the criticisms of the Tribune and Independent^ 

I foresaw that, in the probable condition of parties and 
the country, we could not carry suffrage for the freedman 
by immediate political action. When the ablest and most 
radical Congress of our history came together, they refused 
to give suffrage to negroes, even in the District of Colum- 
bia; and only in an indirect way, not as a political right, 
but as the hoped-for result of political selfishness, did they 
provide for it by an amendment of the Constitution. What 
was prophecy with me, Congress has made history. Re- 
linquishing political instruments for gaining ^he full en- 
franchisement of men, I instantly turned to moral means; 
and enunciating the broadest doctrine of manhood suf- 

*" Conditions of a Restored Union," page 713. 



746 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

frage, I gave the widest latitude to that, advocating the 
rights of black and white, of men and women, to the vote. 
If any man has labored more openly, on a broader princi- 
ple, and with more assiduity, I do not know him. More 
ability may have been shown, but not more directness of 
purpose or undeviating consistency. 

I attribute the recent misunderstanding, in part, to the 
greater excitement which now exists, to the narrowing of 
the issues, and to the extreme exacerbation which Mr. 
Johnson's extraordinary and injudicious speeches have 
produced. To this may be added my known indisposition 
to join in criticism upon the President, and the fact that I 
urged a modified form of that policy which he, unfortu- 
nately for its success, holds. 

Upon Mr. Johnson's accession I was supremely impressed 
with the conviction that the whole problem of reconstruc- 
tion would practically pivot on the harmony of Mr. John- 
son and Congress. With that we could have secured 
every guaranty and every amendment of the Constitution. 
Had a united Government said to the South, promptly 
backed up as it would have been by the united North, 
" With slavery we must take out of the Constitution 
whatever slavery put in, and put in whatever slavery for 
its own support left out," there can scarcely be a doubt 
that long before this the question would have been settled, 
the basis of representation in the South conformed to that 
in the North, and the principle, the most fundamental and 
important of all, might have been established in the Consti- 
tution, viz.: that manhood and full citizenship are identical. 

Such great changes required two things, viz.: prompt- 
ness, and unity of counsels. To secure these I bent my 
whole strength. I urged the purgation of the Constitu- 
tion. I reasoned against mutual distrust, and pleaded for 
unity of governmental action. I did all that I knew how 
to do to confirm the President in his war-begotten zeal 
against slavery; to prevent such suspicions and crimina- 
tions as would tend to revive in his mind old prejudices, 
and bring on a relapse into his former hatred of Northern 
fanatics. I thought I understood his nature, and the ex- 



RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN STA TES. 747 

treme dangers, at such a critical time, of irritating a proud, 
sensitive, and pugnacious man of Soutiiern sympathies, 
little in sympathy with Northern feelings or ideas, and 
brought into the very leadership of those men and that 
train of principles which he had all his life hated and de- 
nounced. That he was sincere and tenacious would make 
the case all the more difficult. I thought I foresaw that a 
division between him and Congress would be the worst 
disaster that could befall us; that the practical test of true 
statesmanship just then was not to be found in theories and 
philosophies, however sound, but in securing and confirm- 
ing Mr. Johnson in his then disposition. 

Upon the assembling of Congress I went to Washington. 
I found Southern men lying prostrate before Mr. Johnson, 
and appealing to his tender-heartedness, — for he is a man 
of kind and tender heart, — disarming his war-rage by utter 
submission. 

I found Northern men already uttering suspicions of his 
fidelity, and, conscious of power, threatening impeach- 
ment. The men who seemed alive to this danger were, 
unfortunately, not those who had the management of affairs. 
Bad counsels prevailed. The North denounced and the 
South sued; we see the consequences. 

Long after I despaired of seeing the President and Con- 
gress harmonious, I felt it to be the duty of all good men 
to leave no influences untried to lessen the danger and to 
diminish the evils which are sure to come should the Pres- 
ident, rebounding from the Republicans, be caught by 
those Northern men who were in sympathy and counsel 
with the South throughout the war. I shall not attempt 
to apportion blame where both sides erred. It is enough 
to say that unity secured at the seat of Government would 
have been a noble achievement of leadership. 

Deeming the speedy admission of the Southern States 
as necessary to their own health, as indirectly the best 
policy for the freedmen, as peculiarly needful to the 
safety of our Government, which, for the sake of accom- 
plishing a good end, incautious men are in danger of 
perverting, I favored, and do still favor, the election to 



748 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Congress of Republicans who will seek the early admis- 
sion of the recusant States. Having urged it for a year 
past, I was more than ready to urge it again upon the 
Representatives to Congress this fall. 

[In this spirit and for this end I drew up my Cleveland 
letter. I deem its views sound; I am not sorry that I 
wrote it. I regret the misapprehension which it has 
caused, and yet more any sorrow which it may have need- 
lessly imposed upon dear friends. As I look back upon 
my course, I see no deviation from the straight line which 
I have made, without wavering, for now thirty years in 
public life, in favor of justice, liberty, and the elevation of 
the poor and ignorant. 

The attempt to class me with men whose course I have 
opposed all my life long will utterly fail. I shall choose 
my own place, and shall not be moved from it. I have 
been from my youth a firm, unwavering, avowed, and act- 
ive friend of all that were oppressed. I have done nothing 
to forfeit that good name which I have earned. I am not 
going weakly to turn away from my settled convictions of 
the public weal for fear that bad men may praise me or 
good men blame. There is a serious difference of judg- 
ment between men as to the best policy. We must all re- 
mit to the future the decision of the question. Facts will 
soon judge us. 

I feel most profoundly how imperfect my services have 
been to my country, compared with its desert of noble 
services. But I am conscious that I have given all that I had 
to give, without fear or favor. Above all earthly things is 
my country dear to me. The lips that taught me to say 
"Our Father" taught me to say " Fatherland." I have 
aimed to conceive of that land in the light of Christianity. 
God is my witness, that with singleness of heart I have 
given all my time, strength, and service to that which shall 
make our whole nation truly prosperous and glorious. 
Not by the luster of arms, even in a, just cause, would I 
seek her glory, but by a civilization that should carry its 
blessings down to the lowest classes, and nourish the very 
roots of society by her moral power and purity, by her 



RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN STA TES. 749 

public conscience, her political justice, and by her intelli- 
gent homes, filling up a continent, and rearing a virtuous 
and noble citizenship. 

By night and by day this is the vision and dream of my 
life, and inspires me as no personal ambition ever could. 
I am not discouraged at the failure to do the good I meant, 
at the misapprehension of my course by my church, nor 
the severity of former friends. Just now those angry 
voices come to me as rude winds roar through the 
trees. The winds will die, the trees will live. As soon 
as my health is again restored, I shall go right on in the 
very course I have hitherto pursued. Who will follow or 
accompany, it is for others to decide. I shall labor for the 
education of the whole people; for the enfranchisement of 
men without regard to class, caste, or color; for full de- 
velopment among all nations of the liberty wherewith 
Christ makes men free. In doing this I will cheerfully 
work with others, with parties, — any and all men that seek 
the same glorious ends. But I will not become a partisan. 
I will reserve my right to differ and dissent, and respect 
the same right in others. Seeking others' full manhood and 
true personal liberty, I do not mean to forfeit my own. 

Better days are coming. These throes of our day are 
labor pains. God will bring forth ere long great blessings. 
In some moments which it pleases God to give me, I think 
I discern beyond the present troubles, and over the other 
side of the abyss in which the nation wallows, that fair 
form of Liberty, — God's dear child, — whose whole beauty 
was never yet disclosed. I know her solemn face. That 
she is divine, I know by her purity, by her scepter of jus- 
tice, and by that atmosphere of Love that, issuing from 
her, as light from a star, moves with her as a royal at- 
mosphere. In this, too, I know her divinity, that she shall 
bless both friends and enemies, and yield the fullest frui- 
tion of liberty to those who would have slain her; as once 
her Master gave his life for the salvation of those who 
slew him.] 

I am your true friend and pastor, 

Henry Ward Beecher. 



NATIONAL UNITY. 



" And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the 
outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the 
four corners of the earth. The envy also of Ephraim shall depart, and 
the adversaries of Judah shall be cut off: Ephraim shall not envy Judah, 
and Judah shall not vex Ephraim." — Isaiah xi. 12, 13. 



The feuds and separations of the tribes of Israel caused 
their ultimate destruction. Ephraim, lying midway, and 
covering the territory subsequently known as Samaria, and 
Judah, lying on the southern part, two of the strongest 
tribes, had rivalries of ambition; and each sought to in- 
crease its own strength by dividing the strength of its 
antagonist. In like manner Greece was internally weak- 
ened by the strife of its little states. It was one of the signs 
and promises of the latter-day glory, that a time should 
come when contiguous tribes would vex and harass each 
other no more, and would study union and not division. 

The world and the race stand, to our modern thought, 
as Israel stood to the thought of the devout Jew. This 
passage has, therefore, a striking application to our land. 
The gathering together here of the outcasts of nations will 
not have escaped your attention. Neither will the dangers 
of alienation and of quarrel; nor again, the promises of 
unity. All of them have, or may be made to have, direct 
application to our own nation, and to our own times. I 
do not propose to consider in symmetrical fullness the 
dangers of disintegration, nor to suggest all, nor even all 
of the important, remedial influences. The shortness of 
the time justifies me in sketching in a few studies rather 
than in elaborating the whole picture. 

* Preached in Plymouth Church, Nov. 18, 1869. 



NATIONAL UNITY. 75 1 

Let me begin by mentioning the disturbing influences 
which are coming upon us through the great movement 
hither of immigrants from all the world. 

As the Nile, in its great annual rise, brings down some- 
thing of the soil of every formation through a thousand 
miles, and deposits it as slime for the sun to turn to soil 
and fruitfulness; as the Mississippi, with its great tribu- 
tary, the Missouri, carries to the fat regions around its 
delta a tribute gathered from almost every point of lati- 
tude and longitude on the continent, so upon these United 
States, with annual deposit, come the immigrating freshets 
of the world. It falls upon us like mud. It shall be our 
richest soil. When it is aerated, and when intelligence and 
religion and liberty shall have penetrated it, it will be 
most precious. Its trouble is all now, and at the first. Its 
bounty and reward shall go on with increasing abundance 
to the very end. Can this nation survive, however, the 
chill and fever of malarial influence engendered by this 
new soil, until by culture the vast mass of new deposit 
shall, by the sun, the air, and the plow, be sweetened, and 
become as wholesome for men as it is fertile for grain ? 

Men change their country, their national dress, their 
laws and governments; but their personal habits, their re- 
ligious beliefs, their domestic traits, their manners and 
customs, their pleasures and amusements, they cannot 
easily change. They bring hither with them their uncon- 
scious conflicts. Things that at home are most innocent, 
they find here to be pugnacious. Nor do they know 
whence the conflict springs. 

There is the everlasting conflict of religious ideas, and 
the organizations to which they give rise. We import vast 
material of spiritual welfare. The Catholic sect is a 
valiant fighter; and it grows apace among us, as it has a 
right to do. It has its own genius, which it must attempt 
to spread abroad. It brings hither the ark of the Middle 
Ages, and thunders at the world which will not walk back- 
ward into it. Swarming about it are all forms of infidel- 
ity — for infidels are the legitimate children of superstition: 
and by "superstition" I mean simply all religious impulse 



752 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

from which the element of free individual reason is left 
out. Besides these come the minor sects; all sects swarm 
and multiply in the atmosphere and summer of liberty. 

The mingling together of these strange materials will 
give rise to quite enough of jarring and of activity; but 
we perceive still another element of discord in the conflict 
of social customs. Our Puritan fathers made channels, 
and Europe is furnishing the water that flows in them. 
We see that the landmarks are going. We see that under 
foreign influences our channels are becoming too narrow, 
and too straight. We perceive laws overwhelmed, sacred 
ideas rudely overborne, and the venerable Lord's day 
given up to festive songs, to dances and to bibulous hilar- 
ity. Many are alarmed, and think that the end of the 
world hath come. Nay, not by some space yet ! 

We should reflect, in regard to this, how differently the 
native-born citizen and the European immigrant have 
been related to this question of amusements. In America, 
so free have we been, so large an outlet has been given to 
our religious liberty, so large has been the expression of 
every political want, so free has industry been and so re- 
munerative, that our people have not felt the need of 
amusements. These have seemed like moths to our in- 
dustry. We have found rest and exhilaration in other 
things. And to-day we urge amusements upon our peo- 
ple chiefly on moral and esthetic and not at all upon po- 
litical grounds. 

But in Europe political liberty is mostly unknown, and 
religious liberty is a pinched dwarf. A crowded popula- 
tion have but slender hopes of wealth from industry. 
Human nature would explode if there were not some vent 
given to it. Not free on the side of religion, not free on 
the side of politics, and not free on the side of industry, 
somewhere the window must be opened to let the air in. 
This, alike, the hierarch and the monarch saw. Govern- 
ments therefore fostered popular amusements. In these, 
almost only, the common people of Europe found them- 
selves at liberty to do what they pleased. Amusements 
are the safety-valves of Europe. 



NATIONAL UNITY. 753 

Now, a people who have had the chief happiness of their 
lives clustering about amusements, come to a land where 
exceeding freedom has left almost no place for such things. 
We have liberty in association with politics, with religion, 
and with business; they with amusements only. With the 
German on the one side, and with the Yankee on the other, 
is the same instrument of liberty, and for the most part it 
plays the same tunes; but that instrument in the hand of 
the Yankee is set four notes higher than it is in Europe. 
It plays business and commerce, and government and re- 
ligion, here. There it plays amusements. And liberty 
discords with liberty, because the instruments are not set 
to the same key. And when immigration brings all the 
pipers together, it is not surprising that the music clashes. 
It is next in mellifluous strains to the bagpipe; and that 
is the instrument that was made to express what was left 
of sound after other instruments had used up all smooth- 
ness and harmony ! 

For the rest, immigration brings strength. On the 
whole, it is intelligent — not exactly in our way, but never- 
theless, intelligent. The Dane, the Swede, the German 
certainly, add to the cerebral power of the nation. The 
Irish add to its activity. They bring large actual wealth. 
They bring indomitable industry, which is the father of 
wealth. This is true of the mass. But to the educated 
men and women who come we owe a greater debt. They 
bring to us a culture, a means of culture, in art, in science, 
in classic instruction, which lays us under solid obligations 
to them. 

There are, however, other dangers of disintegration upon 
this great nation, besides those which come from the con- 
flict of old peoples moving among new ones. It is the 
general tendency of human nature to degenerate in the 
midst of great and long continued physical prosperity. 
Our institutions are the best if they are the best served; 
but the poorest if poorly served. Republican institutions 
demand energetic and virtuous citizens. Compared with 
oars, what great advantage has the steam engine ! But 

if for want of steam you attempt to work the engine by 
48 



754 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

men's hands, it becomes far inferior to oars. Steam-engines 
require steam. Superior institutions require superior mo- 
tive power, or they are worse than the governments of 
primitive force. And nowhere else is government subject 
to so much attrition, and so easily made feeble, as where 
it is republican. 

The immense extent of our country, too, gives bold op- 
portunity to the development, in its remote sections, of 
antagonisms which might in times of heat and violence 
break up the nation into combative fragments. The re- 
cent failure of such an attempt ought not to breed undue 
security. Few know how near it came to success. It 
was an attempt, however, founded upon bad grounds, 
odious to the moral sense of the world. It had bad coun- 
selors, and it followed a course of events which tended to 
arouse and unite the nation in behalf of union to a greater 
extent than before seemed possible. 

But should the Pacific States, in another generation, for 
strong commercial reasons, developed without slavery as 
an underlying cause, undertake a separation, the issue would 
probably be very different. Our late success, then, must 
not argue its like on every subsequent occasion; and the 
failure of the late attempt must not lead us to suppose 
that no more attempts will be made. If now, with slavery 
gone, these very Southern States that lie exhausted tem- 
porarily, waiting a few generations, should on the ground 
of mere political economy and of good government again 
demand separation, the issue is not to be prophesied from 
the experience of the recent struggle. It is not wise, it is 
presumptuous to rest down in the belief that the question 
of union is settled forever. For, in the growths of the 
future, great regions of this nation will be so large and so 
vastly populous, that while they may be prevented from 
rupture by reason of transient passion or sudden anger, 
they can never be prevented from separation if their real 
interest lies in separation. 

We cannot too deeply ponder this truth, that national 
unity cannot be secured except by making it the interest 
of each section to remain in unity. For, so vast are the 



NATIONAL UNITY. 755 

outlying members of this nation, that there is no power, 
even in all that remains, to hinder any one of them by and 
by if it clearly sees its interest in leaving the national or- 
ganization. 

Rhode Island may not be able to withdraw alone, nor 
New Jersey, nor Connecticut, nor South Carolina even, 
nor any single State; but the whole South, the whole 
Southwest, or the vast Pacific slope, move on different planes 
from single States. And that which might be prevented 
in a nook or corner, cannot be prevented on a quarter of a 
continent. 

It was from peculiar reasons not likely to occur again, that 
military power was successful lately. Hereafter only moral 
power remains to us. That, or nothing ! For myself, 
while I long with intense patriotism for the continued 
unity of this nation, I by no means regard the future 
friendly separation of its parts with such repugnance and 
detestation as I did the late attempt. If four great repub- 
lics, homogeneous, civilized, and not in antagonism, but 
friendly, should be created out of the one, I should fear 
no such evils as if vast fragments were to break off and 
organize governments of reaction, rear up a monarchy — 
or a servile aristocracy — and infix principles of mutual an- 
tagonism into the organic structures of the separated 
parts. Yet, absolute political union of the whole conti- 
nent is better, so far as we now can see. Separation will 
not be fatal. At the same time, unity is so much better 
that it is the duty of every Christian patriot to lay wise 
plans, long forecasting, to maintain the present happy 
union, and to maintain it remembering that there is no 
band or strap of iron strong enough, that there is no polit- 
ical force so great, no sword so sharp, and no artillery so 
multitudinous, as to have power to hold together long the 
unwilling parts of so vast a republic as this; that if we 
are to maintain national unity, it is to be by common con- 
sent founded upon common interest. The arrogance of 
any part, whether it be the arrogance of intellect, or the 
arrogance of wealtfi, or the arrogance of skill, or the arro- 
gance of political power, would tend to disaffect and drive 



75^ PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

off other parts of this great nation. There must be not 
simply conciliation, but organic working toward common 
moral, intellectual, physical, and political interests. In 
that, and in that alone, we shall have stability in unity. 

When it is once understood that our only hope of con- 
tinued unity is to be found in the exertion of influence 
rather than of force, it will give a new impetus, it is to be 
hoped, to all the moral energies of Christian men. 

Let us look at some few of the hopeful and potential 
elements by which we may prevent attrition, disintegra- 
tion, and final separation. 

First, we will consider the spread of intelligence. 
Knowledge is that which a man knows. Intelligence is 
that which knows it. Knowledge bears the same relation 
to intelligence which invested wealth does to that spirit of 
enterprise which creates wealth. One is the active cause; 
the other is the product or effect of that cause. Mere 
knowledge will not save men. Intelligence is a preserva- 
tive force. 

American institutions have been criticised as not pro- 
ducing knowledge of the highest kind, nor full symmetric 
culture; but all things in their order! The problems of an 
old society and of a new one are not the same. Intelli- 
gence is of more value to us than high culture, though 
high culture may be more valuable to an old monarchy 
than general intelligence; and of more value to us, by and 
by, than just now. It is giving eyes to the whole people 
to give them intelligence. It gives them training enough, 
at any rate, to guide them safely in their paths. It gives 
them a certain instrument by which to resist the outburst 
of passion, and the warpings and bias of undue selfishness 
and interest. The eye of the engineer, the eye of the 
trained scientist, may be better than the eye of mere intel- 
ligence; but for the whole people, till such time comes in 
the millennial day, that all may be engineers in eye and 
scientists in eye, general intelligence in all is better than 
high training and fine culture in a few. , 

This intelligence is to be produced* largely by the free- 
dom of religious discussion in the land. For, of all things 



NATIONAL UNITY. 757 

that are dangerous, nothing is more so than that unity 
which means stupidity — the mere not resisting or not dis- 
cussing — the condition of inactivity, or torpid swallowing 
and deglutition. That which men most feel in religious 
discussion is that which is vital to it, and that which makes 
it an element of salvation. It is that it is fire, and men can- 
not have fire put on them and sit still. It is that it comes 
from life in earnest, and wakes life in- earnest again. And 
life is the one great necessary quality in national existence. 

It is right here that patriotism and Romanism are rad- 
ically and irreconcilably in antagonism. There might be 
some agreement in respect to symbols and worship — 
though we cannot hope for much approximation. There 
might be some coming together on doctrines; but there 
can be no such thing as agreement on the question of the 
submission of men's religious understanding to an order of 
men appointed to think for them. Our people will never 
think by proxy — and that is the vital point of the Roman 
Catholic Church. "Authority" it is called; but authority 
on the one side is non-independence on the other. 

If Pere Hyacinthe had denied transubstantiation, a way 
of forgiveness might have been found. If he had denied 
the infallibility of the Pope, he might still have been par- 
doned. If he had even denied orders in the priesthood, 
there might have been some escape. But for him to deny 
that superiors had a right to think for their inferiors; for 
him to stand in front of Europe, and dare to say, " I think 
my own thoughts, though my own order and my superior 
think another way " — that is a treason that never can be 
cleansed, either by baptism or by blood. 

The highly organized animals — the birds and beasts of 
the upper rank — select their own food, and reject what 
they dislike. They range the air or the earth, find, take, 
or leave, as it pleases their tongue. It is the round clam 
that lies still, and lets the water bring him what it will. It 
is the round clam — that pattern of devotion! which opens, 
eats, shuts, and is a clam still. And the clam ranks not a 
degree higher on the scale because the whole ocean is so 
big, that brings in his food to him. He is but a clam. 



758 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

So, though the church of two thousand years may roll 
in its waves upon the individual, if the individual only 
•opens, takes, shuts, eats, digests, and opens, takes, shuts, 
eats, digests, it is but a clam spiritual. And Protestants 
are not clams. They are winged and legged. They wan- 
der wide, and fly far, and select diversely. 

Many men may be fascinated by the poetry in the hier- 
archy; many may be juggled by its casuistry; many may 
be philosophically scared by its doctrine; but when it 
comes to that which is the spinal marrow of the question 
— the submission of individual liberty of thought to the 
authority of an organized class of thinkers — that will 
never " go down " in America — or rather it will go down ! 

But the conflicts which go on between sect and sect — 
between the greatest of all sects and the numerous minor 
sects — whatever they may have of mischief in their bitter- 
ness, have also much of education. And it is far better 
that religion, with all the mischiefs of division, be subdi- 
vided thus, if it keeps men alive and awake and at work, 
than that there should be one supreme unity without 
vitality. 

I might mention, also, the distribution of intelligence, 
the progression of thought through books and news- 
papers; but time will not permit me to dwell upon that 
head, as I have other things in store. 

I mention next, the ministration of the free common- 
school, as vital to the hope of a great united republic cov- 
ering a whole continent. The free common-school gives 
to every child the one indispensable element, intelligence. 
Not only does it teach him by the master, but the scholars 
are all masters to each other. There is an atmosphere of 
intelligence in the school, and a public sentiment of intelli- 
gence among the young and rising generation around the 
school house. Intelligence becomes, where common-schools 
abound, one of the signs and tests of manhood. The ques- 
tion is no longer, " Who can throw the heaviest weight 
furthest ? " or " Who can run and leap the most like a deer, 
or hug most like a bear ? " Another test of manhood is 
introduced; and it is no longer mere muscle thatf makes the 



NATIONAL UNITY. 759 

man, but nerve, and brain — the father of nerve. Intelligence 
becomes popular in the district and in the village, and 
manliness goes up a grade, where common-schools abound. 

Thus it equalizes, too. For human life is incessantly 
creating diversity. And if such diversity were to be car- 
ried on, some men, or classes of men, would grow mount- 
ain-high, and the less favored would lie valley-low. And 
so, a kind of aristocracy would follow classification. Classi- 
fication inheres in nature, but it ought not to reign except 
throughout the generation where it asserts itself. Aris- 
tocracy is individual. It does not belong to classes in 
perpetuity. As an attribute of individual excellence and 
power, it is divine, and carries with it aspiration, and am- 
bition, and lordly success. But if human life permits 
itself, by institutions, to hold these elevations for the pros- 
perity of other individuals than those that have earned 
them, you have instantly classified human society into an 
artificial aristocracy and a low-lying common-people. 

Now, Brain is master and owner in this world. Men 
may make resolutions, and form combinations, and devise 
plans; but as long as God keeps his original decrees un- 
changed, so long brain will be found to own and to govern. 
And they that have it will be masters. They that have it 
not will be servants — with protest and rebellion, but under 
the decree of God. And the true equity which comes 
with an ideal democracy, must be that equity which gives 
to every man an equal share of brain culture. He that 
has it not is made, by that very deprivation, lower than 
his fellow who has it. Democracy does not mean a uni- 
versal level. It does not mean compulsory equality. It 
means equitable opportunity. No government has a right 
to thrust a strong man down to the level of weakness. No 
institution has a right to force a weak man up to the level 
of the strong. Organized society will always be graded. 
True equity classifies men into superior and inferior. All 
that can be rightfully demanded is, that all men shall have 
education, for their full development; opportunity, for the 
use of their powers; protection, from the grasp and greed 
of unjust passions in their fellow men. After that, men 



760 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

must find their own level. The liberty of becoming all 
that God gave to a man the power of being, is all a true 
philosophy can derpand. 

The common-school, by beginning early in the child's 
life, by giving a new ideal of life, by affording the primal 
stimulus, not only, but by opening the eyes so that a man 
can avail himself of all the other stimuli which by and by 
he will meet, is keeping up a true democratic equality, by 
giving all men their own proper chance of brain power. 

It is democratic in another sense, because it is bringing 
back to a common level again the irregularities produced 
by active life. Knowledge, riches, skill, I have said, create 
classes, and so inequalities. If, in the spring, you should 
look along a level cultivated field where corn grew the 
previous year, you would see ridges that remain. Now 
comes the plow to turn over the soil, and all the old hill- 
ocks go down, and lie level again for the next crop. The 
common-school is the plow that levels each generation of 
human life. All the children, without regard to superi- 
orities or excellencies of parentage, have to come together 
and stand on a common dead-level in the school-house. 
The schoolmaster does not call the roll of the boys by 
their parents' altitudes, but by the alphabet; and if A is a 
poor man's son, and B is a rich man's son, B comes after 
A, notwithstanding. And the rich man's dunce stands be- 
low the poor man's smart boy — and must. In this little 
germinant republic of the common-school, the boys whose 
parents live in vastly different mansions, and with vastly 
different customs, are brought down to the fellowship and 
brotherhood and communion of a common humanity; 
they are obliged to mix together, and they frame laws 
with each other. There is a public sentiment of the school 
which is just as real, and as vital, and as despotic even, as 
the public sentiment of the great community; and it is 
a good thing to bring down to the original starting point 
all the elevations and inequalities which the various forces 
of active life produce, and to say to all the boys, '' Your 
feet must stand on one level: now shoot your heads as 
high as you please ! " Liberty of growth and equality at 



NATIONAL UNITY. jSl 

the start, is the law of true democratic life; and this is 
what the common-school gives. 

Under no excuse, then, let it be suffered to go to waste. 
It is not simply the knowledge that it gives, but the capac- 
ity to get knowledge which it breeds; it is not merely the 
intelligence which it puts in the way of the youth, but the 
fellowship and the common feeling which grows up among 
the boys of different families, that makes the common- 
school valuable. And it is to the last degree desirable, not 
only that it should be common, but that it should be 
free; and not only that it should be free, but that it should 
be superior. No community can afford to let a primary 
private school be better than their free common-school. 
No academy should be permitted to be better than the 
district common-schools. You cannot anywhere else so 
ill afford to be parsimonious, and call it economy, as in 
the administration of your common-schools. Secure more 
buildings, larger buildings, better furniture, more teachers, 
with ampler support (for the support of common-school 
teachers, especially of women teachers, is a shame and dis- 
grace to our civilization), with more capacity, bringing 
hither the noblest men and the noblest women. This is 
political wisdom. And nowhere is wisdom so squandered, 
and folly so regnant, as where men are unwilling to be 
taxed, and are parsimonious in those revenues which go 
to maintain free common-schools for all the children of 
the whole community. The rich and the proud, the aris- 
tocratic and the arrogant, may be unwilling to send 
their children with the "common herd;" but their chil- 
dren need it. It is one of the best things of their whole 
education; and they should be compelled to do it, — not by 
law, but by the fact that they cannot find a private school 
that is as good as the public school. 

These schools should not only be free and common, but 
they should be unsectarian. If it be needful that the teach- 
ing of technical religion should be excluded from our 
common-schools for the sake of maintaining their univer- 
sality, I vote to exclude it. If it be needful that the Bible 
should not be read in the common-schools in order to main- 



762 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

tain their universality, their freedom and their common- 
ness, I should vote not to read it. 

Because I disesteem it? I, the son of a Puritan, and a 
Puritan myself; I, that would have burned at Oxford, and 
fought with Cromwell — I disesteem the Bible ? Most ven- 
erable is it of all the memorials that have come down 
through all time to our day. More joy is in it for the 
common people, more comfort has it for the afflicted, than 
any other book. It is the very home of a true democ- 
racy. It is the very temple of liberty in this world. I re- 
gard the Bible as being that which stands between aggres- 
sive power and organized selfishness, and the welfare of 
the great mass of the common people. It is the common 
people's book; and there is no class of people that need 
to read it so much as the children of the poor and the 
needy. Therefore I would be glad if every immigrant's 
child, and every home-born child, of every faith, not only 
had the Bible, but had the opportunity to read it every 
single day. And yet, I would not force it upon any. And 
if the reading of the Bible obliges us to forego our prin- 
ciples of toleration, I shall maintain our principles of tol- 
eration. It was because they would not suffer others to 
impose their faith upon them, that our fathers came 
hither; and shall we, now that the power is with us, take 
the ground that we may impose our faith upon those who 
do not believe as we do, because they are in the minority? 
Shall we, after a hundred years, with all the glowing light 
and knowledge which has come down to us on this sub- 
ject, commit the fatal blunder that sent the Pilgrims across 
the sea in winter, to lay the foundations of this noble re- 
public? We believe in the freedom of religion, and do 
not believe in forcing one man's faith upon another man. 
And this being so, how can you organize the common- 
school, which is supported by the public funds, in such a 
way as to force the Bible on the Jews, who do not believe 
in the New Testament, or upon skeptical men who do not 
believe in either the Old Testament or the New? This is 
manifestly inconsistent with the great principles of Chris- 
tian toleration in which we 'believe, and which we love. 



NATIONAL UNITY. 763 

To say that a Christian nation has a right to have Chris- 
tianity taught in its schools, even if it be distasteful to 
the minority, is to put forth a formula for any religious 
sect as soon as it is in the majority. Put the term " Cath- 
olic " in the place of the word "Christian" in the forego- 
ing sentence, and how would the logic suit a Protestant ? 

"What ! " says the Catholic, with real fear and conscien- 
tious earnestness, "Do you propose to bring up the 
children of the community a nest of infidels?" No, I pro- 
pose no such thing. You might as well say, "Do you pro- 
pose to bring up these boys in school a lazy set?" because 
husbandry is not taught in the common-schools. We do 
not teach the mechanic arts in the common-school. There 
are a hundred things that society needs which are not 
taught there. 

In proportion to civilization, work is divided and sub- 
divided. There is one kind of instrument for one func- 
tion, and another kind of instrument for another function. 
Early in the primitive times, when a dozen functions clus- 
tered around one instrument, the teacher used to teach 
religion, the Bible and the catechism, as well as the spell- 
ing-book and the arithmetic; but in our day of general 
intelligence we divide the functions of society, letting the 
church teach dogma and social religion, letting the family 
teach personal religion, and letting the common-school 
perform the task of teaching intelligence. And because 
we take out of the common-school the special function 
of teaching religious dogma and religious history, do we 
therefore take away religion from education ? Is there no 
other religion but that? We teach the child to read; we 
teach him to seek knowledge as a means of manhood; we 
give him the impulse to learn; and we say, "If we may 
not give religious instruction in the school, there is all the 
more reason why we should bring upon the Christian 
household the responsibility of greater fidelity." Build 
up Sunday-schools in greater numbers. See to it that the 
church becomes a true teacher of the whole community. 
Let religion be taught, without which a man is not a man 
in his whole nature, and is not fully equipped for this life 



764 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

or the life which is to come; but let us not forswear our 
own principles of toleration and oppress the conscience of 
the Jew, the skeptical minded man, the Chinaman, the 
Buddhist, or any person of any belief, or nation, or class. 
Let us not impose our religious books as a yoke upon 
others because we happen to have the majority and the 
power. That would be giving to power the charter of 
universal tyranny. 

But are there no other ways of giving religious instruc- 
tion ? Do you suppose religion is all given to men when 
you have read the Bible to them, or taught them the cate- 
chism ? If a man can say the catechism — the Lesser 
catechism, or the Greater catechism, the Westminster cate- 
chism, the Episcopal catechism, or the Lutheran catechism 
— without stumbling, from beginning to end, he is a saint? 
Is religion all taught through such instrumentalities ? By 
no means. If the teacher that stands in the school is 
an example of justice; if justice as represented by the 
teacher is sweetened by lenity; if the teacher is full of 
sympathy, and goes down to the dull and stupid, and 
with infinite tenderness lifts them up, and supplies their 
want, is not that teacher better than any catechetical in- 
struction ? You cannot help having religion taught in 
the school if you have a 7nan or a tvoman there. But it 
need not be dogma. It need not be instruction in the 
philosophy of religion. It is not theological doctrine alone 
which will teach religion. It is not anything that belongs 
to the sects, as sects. It is that which is given to all. For 
I say that " whatsoever things are true," and " honest," 
and "just," and "pure," and "lovely," and "of good re- 
port," are esteemed by men outside of the sects as really 
as by men inside of them. The things which you and I 
believe to be essential elements of religion — the all-inspir- 
ing love-power, with its train of justice, and purity, and 
true sympathy — with those graces which it creates in the 
individual, those virtues of universal good report which 
dwell in every Christian bosom — these things all men be- 
lieve in. Men believe in practical religion, though they 
may not believe in religious doctrines or institutions. 



NATIONAL UNITY. 765 

I therefore say, let your common-schools take care of 
that for which they were instituted — namely, universal in- 
struction for the children of the community in the first 
elements of intelligence. Make the children readers. Give 
them such knowledge and training that they may become 
thereafter their own instructors. This is the function of 
the common-school. And you cannot tax too heavily nor 
too often to secure the fulfillment of that function. The 
wisest expenditure a State can make is for the support of 
common -schools. For, every time you educate a child, 
you stop up a hole at the bottom of the ship of the Com- 
monwealth. 

You will of course expect me to speak not only of in- 
telligence, but also of religion, as one of the indispensa- 
ble elements in producing unity and in maintaining the 
integrity of our national life. 

The spirit of religion is reconciling and peace-bearing; 
but religion developed into a philosophy, or religion in the 
form, of an institution, is pugnacious, and divisory; and 
always has been. The spirit of dogma is not useless: 
nevertheless, it is combative and divisive. The propaga- 
tion of the Church has always been a conflict. This is 
not to be reckoned a fault; but it shows that religion in 
this world passes through stages of development depend- 
ent upon the condition of the hearts upon which it is 
acting. While it works upon the lower portions of the dis- 
position in the individual, and yet more strikingly in com- 
munities, we find it to be a disturbing force. But when 
by disturbance and strife, when by fermentation, human 
nature is at last brought to a higher condition, and com- 
munities are brought under the constant control of the 
higher reason, and of the moral feeling, then there is a 
true ripening and sweetening influence in religion. In 
other words, that which religion does at first, divides and 
shatters; but after a time, when, going through the neces- 
sary developments, religion comes to its last work, that 
will be " peace on earth, and good will to men." 

It is true that the religion of to-day is doing an incal- 
culable work of softening, smoothing, and reconciling; 



766 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

but it is in the smaller organizations of society, and not 
in governments and in whole communities, that its chief 
work is doing. Religion is enriching the household. It 
is making the relationships of the family far more pure 
and far nobler than ever they were before upon so broad 
a surface of population. It is refining social life, not 
simply by the progress of elegance, but by a larger good 
will and a truer fellowship than ever before existed. It is 
developing in individuals purity, self-denial, benevolence, 
and true moral heroism. It is at work in society, restrain- 
ing the outrage of passions, inspiring indolence with ac- 
tivity and enterprise, building up schools, cleansing the 
ways of business, and producing an intelligent morality. 

This work is constantly going on. It is engaged still in 
its primary tasks. It is a fire, a sword, a war-trumpet. 
The music belongs to the future. As apples grow in their 
sourness, all summer long, and find their sweetness as 
they ripen in autumn, so the fruit of religion in its insti- 
tuted life yet puckers the mouth with its acrid bitterness 
of immaturity. By and by it will ripen to sweetness. In- 
stead of unity, it now creates division. A hundred sects 
there are, and each one thinks itself to be the spiritual 
navel of the universe. All of them alike cry, " Come to 
me ! " Every sect in Christendom, from the oldest — the 
Greek and the Roman — down to the last and latest, which 
is proudly Christian on the ground of disowning Christ, 
is in its organic spirit selfish and intolerant. The spirit of 
the sects, whether in the Catholic, the Greek, or the Prot- 
estant Churches, is exclusive, dictatorial, divisive. The 
membership is often far more Christian than the organiza- 
tion to which it belongs. At present, and especially in the 
relations of the sects to each other, it may be said that 
the combative conscience is the nerve of the church. In- 
stitutional religion has bred divisions, and it is its nature 
to do so. Sects are but the splinters and fragments 
which fly off by explosive violence of the moral sense of 
warrior Christians. 

This is just as true of the Roman Church as of the 
Protestant, though the boastful and arrogant affirmation 



NATIONAL UNITY. 767 

is widely prevalent to the contrary. The boasted unity of 
the Catholic Church is only the unity of a tenement house 
filled with quarreling families. The Protestant sects quar- 
rel out of doors. The Catholic sects quarrel inside of the 
house. Twenty families pecking at each other in a tene- 
ment house — that is the Roman Church. Twenty families 
pecking at each other in separate houses of their own — 
that is the Protestant Church. There is no difference be- 
tween them so far as division is concerned. Protestants 
bring forth sects and carry their young with them exter- 
nally. The Catholic Church is marsupial. Like the opos- 
sum and the kangaroo, it brings forth its young; but it 
has a pouch into which they run, and where they nestle 
and quarrel. There is as much quarreling in the pouch 
as there is outside on the back. 

I do not speak this to the prejudice of the Catholic 
Church. Though it will not be owned by them, I speak 
it to their credit. It is an honorable sign; because it is a 
sign of vitality. The age of unity has not come. We are 
living in the age of attrition, of division, of vitality by 
excitement. Many generations beyond us there will be a 
better time; but to-day vitality comes with agitation and 
division. So vastly predominant yet, in the individual 
and in the community, is the coarse and belluine element, 
that for a long time religion must be in conflict. A re- 
ligion without conflict is dead. 

Our past history is an illustration of the fact that relig- 
ious institutions do not tend to national unity, or to any 
considerable power. The civil war was not checked by 
the spirit of the churches. The Presbyterian Church di- 
vided into the North and the South; the Methodist Church 
divided into the North and the South; and then the Epis- 
copal Church divided into the North and the South. In- 
deed all national churches were split, and the halves stood 
in mutual oppugnation. The Baptist and Congregational 
Churches having no national form, by their very nature 
could not divide ecclesiastically; but the churches of the 
North and those of the South were morally separated as 
much as were the two halves of the national churches. 



768 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Neither do we perceive that the work of cohesion, unity 
and homogeneity, as it was not favored by religion in its 
sectarian forms, will be much helped by religious bodies, 
now that they are reunited; for as hitherto, in this dis- 
tressed world, it will so require men's religion to maintain 
the organic life and separateness of each sect, that they 
will have little to spend beyond that. The Catholic sect 
is busy with converting Protestants, and Protestants are 
busy with protesting against being converted. Calvin 
pursues Arminius, and Arminius pursues Calvin. John 
the Baptist is still at the Jordan immersing. The enginery 
of a hundred sects is brilliant, and all proclaim the lapse 
of others, and their own divinity. Meantime, Religion, 
descending as a dove, rests silently upon a myriad souls, 
comforts sorrows, purifies love, overcomes fear, and visits 
men in prisons, at sick beds, in houses of poverty, amid 
trials and sufferings, saying, " Peace, my peace, I give 
unto you." 

In the unity of the nation, and in the reduction of its 
materials, we hope much from religion; very little from 
sectarian churches; much from the Spirit of God blessing 
the truth of his Word to the hearts of individual men; 
much from individual men that are nobler than their sect; 
much from free men whose adhesion to forms and cere- 
monies is the least part of their existence; much from re- 
ligion as it exists in its higher forms in individual natures 
and in public sentiment; very little from dogmas; very 
little from theology, as such. 

And yet, if it could be understood by them, here is a 
new call to the sects, not to disband, but to hold each 
other in true fellowship; to act in harmony, if not in 
unison. The prevalence of gross immorality; the conti- 
nental proportions of infidelity; the waste of the stock 
notions in religion that is going on through tendencies 
generated by material science; the vast work of civilization 
and Christianization which opens, impossible to quarrel- 
ing sects, but not difificult to harmonious and co-ordinated 
denominations, each working and suffered to work in its 
own way, and suffering all others to work — these are prov- 



NATIONAL UNITY. 769 

idential calls to the great body of Christian men and 
women to truce; to new leagues of amity; to co-operation 
and to harmony. 

We ask not that any should cast down their altar, but 
that they should permit us, on the other hand, to worship 
unharmed at ours. We ask not that any shall revamp 
their creed, but that it may not be considered a crime for 
us to maintain ours. We ask none to let the full sunlight 
pour through their windows, instead of shutting it out by 
colored and grotesque panes. If they prefer their win- 
dows let them have them; and let them permit us to have 
ours. Let us look for a true humanity, let us look for the 
true fruit of religion, not in the associated body of tliis or 
that denomination, but in the majesty and power of love 
in the individual hearts of those who are gathered into 
sects. Let us look no more into books, merely. Let men 
be the living epistles in which we shall read what the Spirit 
of the Lord hath to teach in any sect. Here, in the out- 
pouring life, where religion means vital power, power of 
conscience, power of love, power of faith, power of benefi- 
cence, power of sympathy — here let there be co-operative 
harmony and true union. And, if it please God, with a 
civilization which comes from commerce, which comes by 
intelligence, which comes by schools, which comes by the 
peculiar position of all parts of this land — if it please God, 
with this, at length to give us a religion that will teach 
men to love one another, then we shall be saved; our na- 
tion will be maintained by bonds made and riveted in 
heaven, which no instrument yet formed can cut or sun- 
der. 

Until men's reciprocal interests upon the higher plane 
of moral ideas shall be better understood, until religion 
shall be a uniting and not a divisive element, we must with 
more eagerness than ever look to the harmonizing influ- 
ence of men's reciprocal interests upon the lower plane of 
commercial and industrial life. So wide-spread is this na- 
tion, that it has within itself almost all the elements of 
prosperity which other nations seek beyond their own bor- 
ders. The far North and the extreme South work for 

49 . 



770 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

different products, but in difference they find reciprocal 
advantage. If legislation be hindered from making im- 
pertinent interference and restriction of our home and 
foreign commerce, if industry be left free to find its own 
laws and channels, we shall have in commerce a force 
drawing together into undisseverable unity the vast dis- 
tricts of this continent, and binding them, we are ashamed 
to say, with a force which cannot yet be found in moral or 
social influences. For human nature is as yet riper and 
wiser at the bottom than at the top. Self-interest has 
more power in promoting peace and unity, than justice, 
humanity, and religion. 

I shall advert to but a single political agency in the 
maintenance of National Unity, and that is the sacred and 
jealous maintenance of the rights of the States, and the 
vital local governments of States, as distinguished from the 
Federal National Government. New England, from her 
earliest colonial days, with a fervor and intensity that have 
never been surpassed, preserved inviolate the one political 
doctrine which will enable this vast nation, if anything will 
enable it, to maintain Federal Unity; and that doctrine is, 
the rights of the States. When the wholesome doctrine of 
States Rights reappeared in the South, it had in those 
warm latitudes undergone fermentation, and had passed 
into a new thing, viz.: States Sovereignty. There can 
never be more than one sovereignty in a political body. 
The Nation alone is Sovereign. It is, to be sure, a limited 
sovereignty. The metes and bounds have been fixed. 
All within them is Federal, all without belongs to the in- 
dividual States. Within their own spheres, however, the 
self-jurisdiction of the States is absolute. It cannot be 
meddled with or usurped by the general government. 
Things belonging to any single State alone, and not to all 
the States in common, must be under the supreme disposal 
of that State. This simple doctrine of State Rights — not 
State Sovereignty — will carry good government with it 
through all the continent. No central government could 
have sympathy and wise administrative adaptation to the 
local peculiarities of this huge nation, couched down be- 



NATIONAL UNITY. 771 

tween two oceans, whose Southern line never freezes, and 
whose Northern border never melts. 

The States are so many points of vitality. The nation, 
like a banyan tree, lets down a new root where each new 
State is established, and when centuries have spread this 
gigantic commercial tree over a vast space, it will be found 
that the branches most remote from the center do not 
draw their vitality through the long intricate passages 
from the parent trunk, but each outlying growth has roots 
of its own, and draws straight from the ground by organ- 
isms of its own, all the food it wants, without dissociating 
its top from the parent branches ! 

The dignity and power of National Sovereignty will be 
secured by maintaining unimpaired the local Rights of the 
States. 

Let us then all labor for the unity of the nation by 
working for the education of its citizens, for the spread of 
virtue and true morality, for the promotion of an industry 
which shall redeem the poor from servile and sordid 
drudgery, for the freedom of its commerce, for a more 
just and generous sympathy between all its races and 
classes, for a more benignant spirit to its religion; and 
finally, let us implore the God of our fathers, by his own 
wise providence, to save us from our wanton passions, 
from impertinent egotism, from pride, arrogance, cruelty, 
and sensual lusts, that as a nation we may show forth his 
praises in all the earth ! 



'j-j-u 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW.' 



In the momentary disturbance which just now alarms 
the timid and inflames the partisan, men are liable to 
forget the whole field, and form evil auguries on account 
of a few distempered spots. It is now twelve years since 
the great civil war closed. Let us consider the facts which 
that war left upon our hands, and the history of those 
facts down to this hour, and instead of applying a rigor- 
ous ideal moral standard in forming a judgment, let us 
ask what was to have been expected of our people judged 
by the tendency of ordinary human nature in such condi- 
tions as existed at the end of this war. We shall then be 
able to judge whether this should be a fast day or a day 
of thanksgiving. 

The War of Independence, in 1776, broke off our ex- 
ternal allegiance to Great Britain without materially 
changing the internal condition of this people. It did not 
directly affect their condition. The laws remained the 
same. The general policy remained the same. Political 
economy was precisely the same. Under different names 
the very civil government carried out the substantial 
principles of liberty which existed in the British Constitu- 

* Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 30,1876. Lesson: Psa. cxlv. 
Preached shortly after the Presidential election, in which R. K. Hayes was 
the candidate of the Republican, and Samuel J. Tilden that of the Demo- 
cratic party. Fraud was charged ])y both sides, and the result disputed, 
especially as to the votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, fiom 
each of which States were forwarded two sets of certificates of election. 
The Republicans charged the Democrats of fraud at the Southern polls ; 
the Democrats accused the Rejiublicans of fraud in the Southern count 
of votes. The question was finally decided, after several months of gen- 
eral excitement, by an Electoral Commission appointed by Congress for 
the purpose, which rendered its decision on March 2d, by awarding the 
election to Mr. Hayes, the Republican candidate. He was duly inaugu- 
rated on March 5th, 1877. 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW. 773 

tion. How to confederate into one nation thirteen States, 
thus organizing thirteen nations into one nation, without 
destroying the local autonomy of the separate States — 
this was a very difficult task; it was a task of the greatest 
magnitude and importance, then and since; but it did not 
touch the vital sources of prosperity; and the War of the 
Revolution simply left us to go forward along the lines 
already marked down, which we have had no occasion to 
crook or change since that day. 

But the Civil War of 1861 was probably the most con- 
firmatory and revolutionary war that ever was waged — 
confirmatory toward the ideas of our Northern, and rev- 
olutionary toward those of our Southern, populations. The 
effect of this war upon the North cannot be stated in de- 
tail, it can scarcely be stated in outline, in the time which 
is allowed us. 

The Civil War changed no institutions of the country 
upheld by Northern opinion. It disturbed no civil law of 
the government. It interrupted no industry. Still less 
did it subvert any. It changed the relations of citizens in 
the state in no respect, one toward another or toward the 
government. It impoverished no State. What it did was 
to confirm the great principles of internal liberty on which 
the frame-work of government was founded by the Fathers. 
It was a testimony to their doctrines of the rights of men. 
It ratified our history, and illumined it. It made the old 
paths broader, more honorable, and safer. It sent for- 
ward our people with renewed impetus. In no respect, 
then, was it revolutionary. No theory of government was 
changed. No practice founded on the philosophy of State 
Rights or of industrial economy was modified. Every 
great element of civic and social life was left unaltered 
except in being made clearer, stronger, and more lustrous. 
Capital flowed in. Enterprise was stimulated. Inven- 
tions multiplied on every hand. Every form of industry 
was augmented by machinery. Factories increased in 
number, and improved in methods, until they have ena- 
bled cotton men, at least, to beat Great Britain in her 
own markets. From the beginning, or within the last 



774 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

twenty years, some forty thousand miles of railroad have 
been established and completed, some of the most im- 
portant lines since the activity started by the w^ar. Col- 
leges were endowed. Debts were liquidated. Mortgages 
were wiped out. Churches and schools were lit up along 
the whole line of advancing emigration. The last tweniy- 
five years in America — from 1850 to 1876 — have been a 
marvel in the history of the human race. The heart and 
the brain of our people were stimulated by the discussion 
of the fundamental question of manhood in society, and, 
fertilized by this divine enriching, brought forth on every 
hand an unexampled harvest of thought, of skill, of in- 
vention, of industrial wealth, of happiness and of piety. 

Now turn to the South. It is hardly possible for us to 
conceive of the revolutionary results of the Civil War 
upon the Confederate States, — especially upon those that 
lie along the ocean edge and the Gulf of Mexico. It took 
from the hands of a proud and imperious people their 
whole political control. For nearly fifty years, or during 
the founding of our institutions and the formulating of our 
principles, the North, and chiefly New England, bore rule; 
but no sooner were our principles formulated and our in- 
stitutions put in full operation, than the South assumed 
control; and for the past fifty years and more the policy 
of this nation has been dictated wholly by the South. 
The North was busy with business: the South with gov- 
ernment. We worked; they ruled. 

Now, at the close of the Civil War, there are no South- 
ern influences exerted upon our government; for five years 
her men had not appeared in our Congress; and when 
they re-entered they were no longer the men of old, — 
imperious, brilliant, willful, united, and locally selfish. 
Strangers came, one by one, — impoverished, worn, wasted, 
as men that had just escaped from the fire. The reins 
had fallen from their hands; and they who once drove 
this magnificent chariot of a continent, now hung on be- 
hind, walking. 

The war had also introduced into citizenship a million 
colored voters, so that at home the old Southern element 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW. 775 

found itself swamped with this, to them, odious compan- 
ionship at tlie polls. Human imagination can hardly con- 
ceive of a trial greater than for such men as Wade Hamp- 
ton to go about among his late slaves canvassing for their 
votes. The question before that was, "Are they men or 
monkeys ?" Politics was the very nerve-system of South- 
ern gentlemen. No humiliation conceivable could be 
greater than that which befell them afte'r the war, to find 
themselves going to the polls with their ex-slaves, and in 
a helpless minority at that. Always, before, the whites 
had voted not only in their own persons, but in proportion 
to their slave property; but now, their property, standing 
on two legs, was voting against the masters. For years 
large multitudes of Southern men were utterly disenfran- 
chised; and when they were suffered at length to vote 
again, they moved under a shadow to the polls. 

Then, consider that, aside from this utter revolution in 
political government and in methods, there was taking 
place at the same time an equally striking, and if possible 
more odious, civil revolution. Severe as was their polit- 
ical change, their social change was still more intolerable. 
The general equality of citizenship is not so hard to bear 
by those who always held to democratic equality; but in 
the South the colored man was always put outside the 
line of mankind, as well as of citizenship. The law was 
the Roman law; and the Roman law held that the slave 
was not a human being, but a chattel; and this was the 
decision even of Southern judges, who spoke with the ut- 
most indignation of the necessity which compelled them 
to say such things of men. For twenty years at the South 
it had been the business of ministers of the Gospel, of 
professors in colleges, of political economists, of many 
scientific men, and of politicians, to prove the inferiority 
of the African; and they had crowded him back almost 
to his Darwinian ancestors. It was a sore retribution 
that this despised race should be suddenly advanced al- 
most to a perfect equality with his white neighbors. The 
position which the whites had occupied for years was not 
calculated to fit them for welcoming these outcasts. 



776 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

These things are not to be fully appreciated by descrip- 
tion. One must measure the irritation of this change by 
actual experience. Considering what human nature is, 
and what Southern human nature is, is it not a wonder 
that there has been so little outbreak, and that the South 
has been as quiet as she has ? 

But even more significant has been the change of the 
whole industrial 'system of the South. Those that were 
rich have become impoverished. They were rich in slaves; 
they do not now own one. ■ They were rich on account of 
the plantation-system, which robs one class to make an- 
other class excessively rich; but after the war, not only 
were the slaves not theirs, but their plantations were not 
a source of wealth to them. Those who owned the land 
could not work it, and those who could work the land did 
not own it, and could not buy it; and so there was a land- 
lock. Free labor in the place of enforced labor brought 
in not only a new principle, in Southern industry, but a 
revolutionary and antagonistic one. 

It is the necessity of every man to work out his own 
support. Now, in the South that necessity carries in it 
the divine blessing, and an unexampled prosperity; for I 
foresee a South that yet one day may out of her radiant 
height look down upon the North and challenge compari- 
son in every element of civilization and of social comfort; 
and I foresee that the South will dig it out in this hard 
mine in which she is now working with sweat, and tears, 
and complaint. The necessity of working, in order that 
every man shall earn his own living by the sweat of his 
brow, is a moral revolution as well as an industrial one. 
Men may say what they please, but the moment a man 
works for his living, new influences get hold of him. I 
care not who the leaders are, what the prevailing philoso- 
phy is, or what men's religious sectarianism may be, the 
moment the whole body of men in society are obliged to 
work for their own living a new state of things comes 
upon them which will in the end control them. Under 
such circumstances a man measures society by a difterent 
standard. Skill, industry, good management and the like. 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW. 777 

begin to be things sought and admired by him. Formerly 
dogs, horses, dances, and sprees, were the delight of the 
elegantly idle, and they marked the difference between 
those that worked and the society gentleman; but that 
which is now becoming the question with the gentlemen 
is, whether he can pay his board, and whether he knows 
how to work. "Do you know how to be tastefully idle ?" 
asked the old regime in the South; "then step into society." 
" Do you know how to earn a living ? " asks the new state 
of things in the South. And work is a necessity which 
no man there can escape from — thanks to the bravery and 
perseverance of the South in the war. They burned up 
their property, and stood on barren ground again; and 
no man of them can exempt himself from this universal 
and primal necessity of working. Work to-day, through- 
out the South, is doing gradually and silently what work 
did for the North in times gone by. Work quickens 
the flow of sympathy, and the worker learns to "conde- 
scend to men of low estate," when he is obliged to seek 
his living in the soil, and in the shop, and on the ship, 
and in all the thoroughfares of industry. This change of 
political economy, of wealth-producing methods, pene- 
trates every pore, and pervades every interest in the 
South. It is universal and continuous throughout so- 
ciety. You may send philosophers to teach, ministers to 
preach, and schoolmasters to educate; but I tell you the 
plow and the hammer will do more to educate the South 
into new life than all of these put together. 

No greater wrench could be given to a state than a rev- 
olution of its whole wealth-producing economy within a 
period of two or three years; and when this takes place 
by force, amidst the desolations of war, among an im- 
poverished people, standing in the ashes of their former 
riches, defeated, stripped of power and influence, and 
humiliated, it taxes human nature to the utmost bound of 
endurance, and tasks our imagination to conceive of it. 
And yet the South has stood the strain; and I think in 
that regard has gained more glory by her well-doing since 
the war than in all her past history, and is greater in her 



778 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. , 

misfortune even in spite of all the mistaken outbreaks that 
have occurred, than ever she was on the battle-field, or in 
the council chamber. 

To all this must be added the first periods of the new 
governments in the South under the new regime. Two 
things were certain: first, that many of the most important 
offices in the reconstructed states would fall to the lot of 
Northern citizens, for the reason that the offices must 
be filled, and yet the public sentiment in the South for- 
bade the native to execute the duties of certain offices at 
certain times, in a way which should be suited to the new 
condition. They ejected themselves from the offices; yet 
these had to be filled. It was a pity; it was a great evil; 
but not to fill them was a greater evil — and that is what 
can be said in behalf of " carpet-baggers." This great 
evil sprang not from the North, but from the temper and 
spirit of the South — a spirit and temper which should not 
surprise us, which we should expect, and which very likely 
we ourselves, under like circumstances, would manifest in 
even a stronger manner; but causes and effects have no 
respect to such considerations. There was the fact, and 
there was the way in which the fact compelled circum- 
stances. 

It also was inevitable that in many States the newly en- 
franchised citizen should become the legislator, and that 
by reason of his inexperience and ignorance he should 
carry out a policy destructive to the best interests of peace 
and prosperity; and would you expect that men who had 
been under the heel all their days, and were suddenly 
thrown up into the liberty of manhood and citizenship, 
and had changed by reason of their majorities in elections 
the whole legislation and judicial economy of the States, 
— would you expect that they could administer wisely ? 
Slavery would not be the devil that it is if its victims could 
be used with so little injury, that immediately on becom- 
ing freemen they could manage popular affairs with discre- 
tion. It was the folly of Southern States that brought on 
revolution; it was part and parcel of the legitimate re- 
sults of the war that the legislatures of those States 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW. 779 

should come into the hands of unwise and inexpert men; 
and it was to be expected that they would be afflicted 
with most desolating legislation. It was the necessity 
of the case. When South Carolina precipitated this na- 
tion into war, she established that logic of events which 
has wrought the disasters that are now goading her to 
desperation. She sowed the wind, and is reaping the 
whirlwind. She says that it is a wind set in from the 
North: I say that it is a wind from above, falling down 
from the seat of justice. 

Upon this broad exposition of facts, let us set forth cer- 
tain considerations which may in their issue befit this day. 

First, the evils of the South are of her own procur- 
ing. They are not Northern inflictions. They are the 
logical sequences of those actions against which the North 
protested, which she bore long with resentment, and which 
she resisted by the sword only when they threatened to sub- 
vert the very foundation of the national government. The 
South took her chances, and must abide by the issues of 
those chances, — issues which had not run out and expended 
themselves the moment that peace was declared. You can 
make a wound in a moment which you cannot heal in a 
year. The Southern people could by a vote in a few 
months bring on secession; but from it have flowed on and 
on a long series of disasters that have been filling the 
South with complaint. Poverty; the loss of position; the 
dissemination of her population; the interposition of a 
foreign magistracy upon her affairs; a military force, — all 
these were a part of the risks taken. When she declared 
war, she substantially declared that she was willing to take 
the issues. The very sharpest pinch, therefore, of Southern 
trouble, she should bear in mind evermore, is of her own pro- 
ducing. General Gordon [of Georgia] is very loud in his 
denunciations when the white man suffers; he cannot bear 
to see the heels of the white man touched by the toes of 
the United States soldiers. Thousands of black men were 
driven from the polls, scores of hundreds of them were 
maltreated and killed, whole counties were brought under 
anarchy, and he had no telegrams filling Northern papers; 



78o PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

but when for the simple preservation of order the United 
States soldiers, at the request of the Governor of the State 
of South Carolina, stand at the State-house doors, he and 
men like him send forth a wail of despair; and their North- 
ern partisans sit in sackcloth, in the valley of desolation, 
and mourn over the wrongs of the poor Southern people ! 

Notice, too, that upon the two States which were the 
most vicious and insubordinate (thorns in the side of 
Peace, from their very origin, and the sections where Slav- 
ery exhibited its worst features) have fallen most severely 
the troubles of reconstruction, — South Carolina and Lou- 
isiana. It is as if God had said, " I will make slavery the 
punishment of slave-holders, so that all the earth shall see 
and know that I, the Lord, delight in justice, and hate op- 
pression, and make the oppressor drink of the cup which 
he himself has mingled." 

Second, taking the Southern States collectively, blame 
them as much as you will, I cannot but say that, consid- 
ering their accumulated sufferings; considering their 
strangely altered conditions, for which they are at fault, 
since the war, with its distress and its exhaustion; in view 
of their poverty, which has come upon them like an armed 
man, and their social disintegration, which has gone on 
step by step, and their new industrial organization, and 
their humiliating political condition, — considering these 
things, I cannot but say that in spite of all outbreaks and 
errors and complaints, their general conduct ought to ex- 
tort admiration from all men whose expectations were 
founded on the average of nations. It is not in human 
nature to bear every conceivable afifliction and kiss the rod 
— and the South never were given to kissing the rod. For 
fifty years they were supreme. They said to one man 
"Go," and he went; and they said to another man 
" Come," and he came — not on the rice or cotton planta- 
tion alone, but on the larger plantations of politics; and 
when you consider how their eyes stood out with fatness, 
when you consider what unbounded wealth belonged to 
the South, though poverty belonged to the poor whites, 
and when you consider how totally their social condition has 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW. 781 

been reorganized, how all their old paths have been rubbed 
out, and how they who sat under the shadow of the mag- 
nolia are sitting under the shadow of the thistle and the 
nettle, is it strange that they rub? Is it strange that they 
do not seem to enjoy the luxury of their desolation ? And 
yet, /'// the main, with what vigor have they prosecuted their 
industries ! In the main their tendencies are all whole- 
some. Of the fact that there is a class of whites who are 
uncontrollable by the wiser and more cultured of the 
Southern people, no man is ignorant; and that these tur- 
bulent spirits have often bubbled and broken forth like 
boiling springs, we know; but it seems to me that no one 
could expect less. And taking Virginia, and North Caro- 
lina, and South Carolina, and Georgia, and Florida, and 
Alabama, and Mississippi, and Louisiana, and Texas, and 
Arkansas, and Missouri, and Tennessee — taking them all 
together, how have they adapted themselves to their 
changed circumstances ! I never feel so sure of the tri- 
umph of the cardinal principles of liberty under a republi- 
can government, and I never feel so proud of the stock to 
which I belong, reckoning the South with the North, as 
when I take a comprehensive view of the conduct of the 
South, under the disasters that she has brought upon her- 
self. There have been some outbreaks and outrages; in 
many States systematic wrongs have been done; there 
have been numerous threats and much cruelty; but taking 
the people throughout all the Southern States, they de- 
mand and deserve credit for the conduct they have pur- 
sued. 

This leads me, next, to call to your mind the criticisms 
which have been urged in every form, and with the most 
fiery intemperance, upon that great political division of 
our people who have had control of this government for 
the last fifteen years. How many men do I hear to-day 
finding fault with presidents, with secretaries, with promi- 
nent leaders in the Republican party ! It would seem as 
if they thought that all that has taken place in the time 
that has gone by was as simple as the raising of a harvest 
on a Northern farm. It would seem as though they 



782 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

thought that it was only to be reaped by appropriate meth- 
ods, and threshed out with an appropriate machine, and 
garnered in a proper manner, and sent to a regulation 
mill, and converted into food; it would seem as if they 
thought it was all very easy. But was there ever any- 
where an administration which had such intrinsic difficul- 
ties to settle ? That they have come short, no man denies; 
that they have fallen into many errors, everybody will 
admit; but they were walking in a path that had never 
been explored. They were doing things for which there 
had never been a pattern nor a hint. They were perform- 
ing duties without any illumination from experience, 
which were unknown to the past, and which were intrin- 
sically almost impossible. To turn five million slaves 
into citizens — is that an easy thing ? To give them citizen- 
ship right in the midst and presence of those who yester- 
day owned them and had them under their feet, and to 
maintain peace between the two classes — was that easy ? 
To see to it that these enfranchised men should have some 
opportunity for gaining intelligence, and some chance for 
self-earning, while, at the same time, the whites should be 
perfectly protected — was that easy ? To bring this great 
horde of men — who were made citizens, not on moral con- 
siderations, but merely for self-protecting political reasons, 
— into the administration of government throughout the 
whole bounds of the South; and yet, to preserve equal 
justice everywhere without any jar of local self-govern- 
ment, with a minimum of physical force among a people 
chafed by defeat and impoverished, and sore in their pov- 
erty, and seeing from the very ground the dirt rise up to 
equality with them; and to hold them back from violence, 
and carry them safely from year to year without collision 
and attrition to a final and a perfectly restored and recipro- 
cal love and confidence, — never was there put in the hands 
of any government such a task as this ! And are we to 
forget it, in measuring administrations ? 

It is said that some high officials have stolen; it is said 
there has been some profligacy in the Treasury. As if 
this were the first time that government officials ever stole ! 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW. 783 

As if there had ever been a nation whose Treasury was 
not a red-hot infernal' den of temptation to every one 
around about it ! When you come to compare the amount 
of money that has passed through the hands of the fiduci- 
ary agents of our government during the last twelve or 
fifteen years with the amourit that passed through the 
hands of the government under President Washington, you 
find that the percentage of fraud is vastly less now than 
it was during the administration of this government in its 
earlier periods. Look at it whichever way you will, mul- 
tiply the mistakes which have been made as much as you 
please (I care not, except to have them remedied), by and 
by, when the excitement of the present is all past, and they 
stand in history against the background of justice, then 
the lives of these men who have assisted in the reforma- 
tion of this land will stand higher than the heroes who 
framed our Constitution, and brought in the primitive 
days of liberty. 

And let me say one word more: that when that reckon- 
ing shall be made, not far from the side of the Martyrs 
will stand the illustrious Warriors; and that the man* who 
brought peace, at last, by his sword, and who, for eight 
years has administered this government by singular silence 
and singular disinterestedness, will stand second only to 
Lincoln. 

The question now arising on every side, especially among 
the timid, the fearful, and the unknowing, — that is, among 
almost all men, — is whether the conditions in which we 
find ourselves at this period of the reconstructive history 
of this country, whether the strain that is brought upon it 
by the peculiar exigencies of to-day, are not going to be a 
tension greater than it can bear ? 

If I read aright, we are contending with difficulties in 
South Carolina, in Florida and in Louisiana; and those 
difficulties, as I shall show in a moment, take hold high 
up; and the question is. Can this government endure a 
pressure like that which is brought to bear upon it ? The 

* General U. S. Grant, who was now nearing the end of his second presi- 
dential term. 



784 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

safety of law, of government, and of public weal, under 
free institutions is every day made" more apparent by the 
parallel drawn between the strong governments in Eu- 
rope, with a minimum of liberty in them, and the republi- 
can government on this side of the water, with a maxi- 
mum of liberty in it. '" 

Nothing is more justly dreaded in Europe than a dis- 
puted succession to the throne; and it is justly dreaded, as 
you know from what has taken place there. What wars 
have deluged France; what convulsions have shaken Italy; 
what turmoils there have been in the German Empire and 
in Russia; what storms have burst forth in Great Britain, 
filling the land with confusion, on account of royal succes- 
sion ! But there have been fifteen Presidents within a 
hundred years in these United States; there have been 
twenty-two elections here during the same period; the 
question of succession has been debated with fiery zeal 
before this great people, and settled without sword or 
bayonet, twenty-two times, and I am not afraid to put 
alongside of the experience of Europe this record of a free 
people under free institutions. 

But the strain which this nation bears every four years 
is not its only strain, though that is a great one. This is a 
thorough-bred nation; and the place where other horses 
break down is the place where the thorough-bred horse 
comes out victorious — the point where the strain comes. 

If it comes to that, it is better for us to sit patiently under 
a wrong, rather than invoke tumult. In 1844, when Henry 
Clay was defeated in his race for the Presidency and Louisi- 
ana cast her electoral vote for Polk, it was not a question 
of doubt that the Plaquemine frauds robbed Clay of the 
vote of Louisiana. It is not certain that he would have 
been elected if he had received the vote of that State; that 
is fairly open to doubt; but that the whole Whig party 
honestly and firmly believed that Clay had been fairly 
elected, and that the Presidential office was withheld from 
him by gross fraud, there can be no doubt. What hap- 
pened ? What did the great Whig party do under the 
sting and outrage of losing by fraud what they had gained 



CENTENiVIAL REVIEW. 785 

by votes ? They made no riots, no revolution, and no civil 
war. They yielded to necessity, and saved law, even when 
it was corrupted, and appealed to the future for redress. 

The same strain was brought on our State of New York. 
John Jay was fairly elected governor, and George Clinton 
was counted in by indisputable fraud. What did the citi- 
zens do? They submitted to the form of law out of which 
it was designed that equity should spring, and then, at the 
next election, triumphantly overthew their adversary, and 
elected Jay. 

Consider the struggle between the North and the South 
that grew out of slavery; consider the usurpation of office 
by Southern men; consider how courts were in the hands 
of biased judges; consider the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise; consider the needless and useless insult to 
the North by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law; con- 
sider the gross outrages that were perpetrated in Kansas; 
consider the refusal of the South to accept the arbitrament 
of the vote when Lincoln was elected. And what did the 
North do ? It bore every strain, and sought relief by legal 
and moral, and not by physical force. 

The violence which brought forth the war was Southern, 
and not Northern. It was South Carolina that assailed the 
flag of this nation, and the hand that smote the flag was 
itself smitten with paralysis. 

Whatever may be the formal decision respecting the Pres- 
idency in this great exigency, whatever the justice of the case 
may be, the North, by both of its great parties, will accept 
that decision. They will abide by the declaration of the 
legal judges of election, whatever suspicion or conviction 
there may be of fraud, and they will look to the future for 
redress. The South certainly will not offer violence to the 
final decision. She has no blood left. She is pale yet 
from the wounds of war. 

Besides, — Buchanan is not President to-day ! 

Lastly, can we, at this point of our history, afford to 

have the whole machinery by which the will of the people 

is made manifest to the Government vitiated by fraud ? 

We cannot — we cannot ! Let me say to you that though 

50 



7S6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

the danger of this people springing from riches is great, it 
is not the greatest. Though the danger springing from a 
corrupt luxury is great, it is not the greatest. Though 
the danger springing from the vast and complicated ap- 
paratus of this Government that rules a continent, and 
that is the most complicated government in the world — 
though this is great, it is not the greatest of our dangers. 
The danger that hangs over the vote is the most imminent 
peril that threatens our liberty; for while there is around 
about almost every act of men a sense of right, a con- 
science, there has come to be, to a large extent, no 
conscience, no sense of right, among American citizens as 
to their duty in regard to the vote. It is bought and sold 
shamelessly in the market. Capitalists and corporations 
find it more economical to trade by wholesale than by 
retail. They find that it is cheaper to buy the representa- 
tive who is sent to the legislature, than to buy all of those 
who send him there; and our courts are presided over and 
our public economy is determined, largely, by men who 
are under the influence of those who buy and sell votes; 
and if this fraud which corrupts and destroys the integrity 
of the vote in small spheres, advances from neighborhoods 
to States, and from States to larger sections, rising till it 
touches the sacred height of the chief Executive of this 
nation, from that moment we shall be no better than 
Mexico, and our greatness will be the measure of the 
pangs that we shall suffer in coming disorganizations and 
revolutions. No, we cannot afford to have a President 
who sits in Washington placed there upon a fraudulent 
counting of votes. 

I know, and you do know, that if there had been a fair 
election permitted in South Carolina, in Florida, in Lou- 
isiana, and in Mississippi, there would have been an over- 
whelming majority given for the Republican candidate; I 
know, and you do know that, not by fraud in counting, 
but by physical force and intimidation, men were denied 
their rights at the ballot-box, and that majorities were 
rolled up which in this respect were fraudulent, that they 
did not represent the will of the whole people freely ex- 



CENTENNIAL REVIEW. 787 

pressed, but represented the will of those who seized the 
power, and by threat or actual bloodshed wrought a 
change in the result of the political campaign. 

What then ? Wholesale fraud on one side does not 
justify fraud on the other side; and if there is to be a 
President sitting in Washington by fraud, in the name of 
heaven, let not the emancipating party, that has con- 
ducted this nation through war to settled peace, be tainted 
with the irredeemable corruption of that fraud! Better a 
thousand times that your antagonist should be in the 
Presidential chair than that your chosen friend should be 
there, if you put him there by one single tainted vote; for 
we cannot afford to set a bad precedent. When good men 
set bad precedents bad men use them; and rather than 
that the Republican party should hold the reins of power 
by putting a President in the chair at Washington who 
goes there by one vote that prudent and honest men have 
reason to believe is tainted, better, far better would it be 
that that party should retire, and give place to the other 
side. Therefore it is my hope and wish that if Governor 
Hayes should have reason to believe that there has been 
unfairness in the count in Louisiana, or Florida, or South 
Carolina, and that the reported electoral vote does not 
represent the actual vote, though the fraud in the vote 
itself is on the other side — it is my hope and wish that 
under such circumstances he should say, and make himself 
forever illustrious by saying, " I will not sit in Washing- 
ton's seat unless I can sit there with Washington's purity." 

Meanwhile, dismiss from your minds all thought of lurid 
war and social disorganization and distress. These are 
but the fireballs with which political parties illumine their 
campaign. The country is safe. A part of the road from 
Egypt through the desert has been passed, and the rest of 
that road is to be gone over. Forty years in the wilder- 
ness is the inevitable necessity. If the Republican party 
have the administration of the government I hope they 
will abbreviate the period in which the remnant of conflict 
will be ended. If they are thrust out, and the other side 
come in, they, in the end, will bring about the same result; 



788 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

by a longer road, by a more circuitous route, and with 
more vexation and suffering; but surely, in the end. 
Whether one side or the other go to Washington, the free 
citizens of this whole nation have in charge the liberty 
and prosperity of the nation, and these will be preserved. 
A glorious future is before us. The difference lies in this: 
Shall it be brought in easily, and speedily, and justly, or 
must it come by roundabout ways, with more pain and 
tears ? That // will come, I have no doubt whatsoever. 

Therefore, I call on all men, and on you especially, 
to join with me in thanksgiving and praise to God this 
day, that, while we have harvests and health and essential 
peace throughout the nation, and an abundant chance of 
prosperity in the future, a revolution has taken place by 
which five million slaves became five million freemen; by 
which men leagued for oppression were smitten and over- 
thrown in thirteen States; by which the whole economy 
of those States was reorganized; by which all their social 
relationships and political policy were changed; and by 
which there have been laid again new foundations in 
righteousness, with the promise that when the tears are 
done, and the sighs and groans are past, they shall have a 
future that never could have dawned on them if they had 
remained intact in their old economies. And the day will 
speedily come when your children and mine, and the chil- 
dren of Southern men, shall sit down together in amity 
and speak of the deeds of their fathers, forgetting the 
furor, the irritation, the anger, and the bloodshed, when 
their interests shall be not merely identical, but reciprocal, 
and this whole land shall be Immanuel's land. 

Never in my life have I stood to exhort you to thanksgiv- 
ing with a more profound sense of our obligations to God, 
and of gratitude in especial for that guidance by which 
we have been brought through a peril that seldom comes 
to any nation, and that never before came to a nation so 
large and difficult of administration as this. 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF 
TO-DAY.* 



" Samuel said unto the people, It is the Lord that advanced Moses and 
Aaron, and that brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. Now 
therefore stand still, that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the 
righteous acts of the Lord, which he did to you and to your fathers." — i 
Sam. xii. 6, 7. 



The Hebrew literature is colored with intense patriot- 
ism. The events of their history — their origin, their 
fathers, their bondage, their release, their wanderings, 
their final settlement in Palestine, their wars, their laws, 
their captivities, their restorations — are the staple of their 
sacred books, and became the types upon which their 
prophets and sweet singers fashioned an ideal future. 
This whole human life on earth was to them the symbol 
of the wanderings of "strangers and pilgrims;" and when, 
at length, a clear conception of another life dawned, they 
called Heaven the New Jerusalem. Thus the heaven' and 
the earth, time and eternity, were dressed out in the robes 
of their national history. 

It was a wholesome practice. It harvested every great 
deed and achievement of their race, and made it seed-corn 
for the future; it trained their children to heroism, to 
patriotism, and to a religion which enshrined them both. 

I propose, this morning, a retrospect of American his- 
tory, from a single point of view — namely, its eminent 
Periods of Peril. I do this within the hour — that is to 
say, I do it in outline. 

The vital nerve which runs through and connects the 
whole history of these United States is the power of in- 

*Sermon in Plymouth Church, Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 29, 1877 • 
preached when it was proposed to pay the United States Bonds in silver. 



79° PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

telligence, of rectitude, of patience, and of liberty to achieve 
every great end needed for national prosperity. Physical 
force has had less part in the vast results achieved in 
national life in this country than in the results achieved in 
any other national life of such magnitude and duration. 

I. The first Period is the Colonial; the settlement, the 
intermediate, and the revolutionary, are its three divisions. 

The fermentations of Europe had so far perfected the 
wine of principle that our fathers brought hither no 
doubtful mixture. There were certain definite faiths, in 
part derived from old English liberty and in part from the 
new Reformation, — they were principles, and not theories, 
that they brought. They had no Utopian schemes, no Pla- 
tonic Republics, no phalansteries or communistic dreams. 
They believed in the sacredness of manhood by reason of 
its alliance with Christ and immortality. They believed 
in that liberty which consists in taking on law. Men are 
free in proportion to the number of spheres of obedience 
that they can fill. Laws are not shackles to impede, but 
tools and harnesses to assist human force. The peculiar- 
ity of our early ancestry was not that they loved liberty — 
everything in heaven, on earth, and in the sea does that; 
but they discerned the royal fact, which others had missed 
who threw off law to find liberty, that by taking on laiv men 
are juade free. Obedience to God's law is the highest lib- 
erty to which humanity may ever reach. 

With these rational principles not yet quite ripe in their 
hands, to be somewhat more developed through mistakes 
and suffering, the special peril of the colonial period was 
in its gestation and birth of the institutions of liberty. 

Liberty is but a vapor without its appropriate engines. 
As a disembodied principle, it wanders up and down the 
earth, seeking rest and finding none. It needs a body. 
In other days that body has been sometimes a shapeless 
giant, or a dwarf, or some monster form. In our colonies 
it pleased God to give to it such a shapely body as 
suited its merit. The church, the state, the legislatures, 
the courts, the executive, the body of wise laws all re- 
volving within well defined spheres — these were the prod- 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DAY. 79 1 

ucts of that long colonial history, which, because it 
threw up no auroral glow upon the heavens, seems to 
many of little importance. 

In the New Testament, the life of Mary after the an- 
nunciation retires from sight; but in that obscurity was 
silently forming the Saviour of the world. The whole 
history of America lay in silent shadow in the early and 
middle colonial periods. Our fathers were incarnating 
principles in institutions. For the purposes of rom.ance, 
their straitness, their rigorous life, their seclusion upon the 
hard soil in a hard climate, were not full of interest; but 
for great practical uses these were elements of good fort- 
une. When the army of fowls prepare for their young, 
they do not sit down upon the fat marshes of the south, or 
on the sedgy edges of southern rivers. They lift them- 
selves into the heavens and sail to the Arctic circle, and 
there, upon rocks, under the edge of ice, find security for 
their young. 

New England was the breeding -ground of America. 
Her seclusion and her hard ways were mercies. It was 
not in soft places and amidst Egyptian leeks and onions 
and melons and cucumbers that Israel planned the He- 
brew commonwealth, but under the crags of Sinai, and 
along the sands of the wilderness. The pitiable part of 
colonial history is the best part of it, and its glory. 

II. The second Period of Peril was that of transition 
from dependence to a free and independent national life. 
All republics have been short lived, perishing from the 
weakness of their political system, or, more often, the want 
of morality in their citizens. At the bottom of every en- 
during system must lie a principle of universal rectitude. 
" Righteousness exalteth a nation." That is the ledge out 
of which every nation must quarry foundation stones. 
This was the cry of Israel through ages; but Israel did not 
know how to build upon this sure foundation. 

Now New England was the point in time where in 
mental development Palestine and Greece met. In New 
England were Socrates and Moses, Isaiah and Plato. 
There was for New England no art. Phidias and his 



792 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

brethren had perished in the Red Sea of time. But the 
profound moral sentiment, the passionate yearning for 
righteousness, the feeling after God, which centered in the 
old Hebrew, came down into New England. The Greeks 
could bring no conscience. There was never enough 
moral sense in Greece long to hold a government together. 
Iron was wanting in their blood. But the Greek brought 
to New England the keen intellect, the speculative genius, 
the hunger for ideas; and the typical New Englander 
may say, " Greece was my father, and Palestine was my 
mother." Jonathan Edwards stands forth as the best type 
of this extraordinary union. 

When the war burned the cords that held the colonies to 
the throne there was an hour of perplexity. "I have 
taken off my coat, and how shall I put it on again ? " was 
the sentiment of the time. Then it was that Virginia 
kindled her light at the altars of New England; in whose 
public assemblies, called in times of peril to consider the 
general welfare, in whose bills of rights, in whose town- 
ships, and in whose minor colonial unions for temporary 
purposes, were found the motives and sketch-forms of that 
great Constitution which stands without a parallel among 
institutions of human formation. If you say that Virginia 
led our republic in the revolutionary period, and in the 
primitive period of our Constitution, I answer. Yes; hers 
was the root and stock, but New England gave the scions 
that were grafted in, and that formed the top and fruit. 

But that after times had something to add and some- 
thing to change does not take away from the grandeur 
of that great instrument which has for nearly one hun- 
dred years proved itself adequate to the conservation of 
liberty and of power. The perils through which it came 
to strength are largely hidden by the glow of its abun- 
dant prosperity. 

The foundation of those great piers* that stand over 
against each other, on our river, are forever hidden. Men 
see, and will see, only the majesty of the accomplished 



* Of the East River suspension bridge, between New York and 
Brooklyn. 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DAY. 793 

work; but few remember the darkness, the perils, the un- 
matched difficulties of the caisson in the beginning. 

New applications and larger developments have been 
given to the elements of the Constitution, and some impost- 
humes have been cleansed from it, and some weak spots 
have been removed by the strong hand of war; yet the hun- 
dred years have but rounded out and finished the great 
work exactly planned and framed by the fathers. Forty 
free States are held together in one sovereignty, and fifty 
millions of people move in a safe liberty under a system 
that touches the nation as summer touches the Continent; 
with a pressure that enforces growth and develops strength, 
but oppresses nothing. 

III. Now comes the third Period of Peril, from fungoid 
growth. It befalls men, sometimes, to carry about a fun- 
goid growth, which, feeding on juices elaborated in the 
body, is steadily sucking out that very life upon which it 
is feeding. Such was Slavery. Its cancerous roots had 
spread to every department of life and government. It 
had suborned the legislation and politics of the country. 
It had thrown its filmy net of "construction" around the 
courts. It had full possession of the executive govern- 
ment. It had filled the channels of commerce with its ill- 
gotten wealth. It had fascinated the free laborer, who, 
like a bird charmed by a serpent, fluttered and chirped 
before the very mouth that was opening to swallow him. 
It had benumbed the conscience of the church, and priests 
and preachers were chanting lullaby to this Devil's brood. 
The voice of liberty was heard as the voice of one crying 
in the wilderness. Even brave men had some revelations 
of despair. They knew not the riches of God's resources. 
Like the traitor of old, who hanged himself and all his 
bowels gushed out, so this traitor to liberty destroyed 
itself by its own audacity and judicial blindness. A little 
policy, a show of courtesy, and the golden yoke of pros- 
perity would yet have been easily borne upon the servile 
merchant's and manufacturer's neck. It might have won 
with smiles that which it could not gain with frowns. It 
might by courtesy and kindness and some appearance of 



794 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

compliance have ruled half a hundred years longer; but it 
had grown impudent, arrogant, domineering, and su- 
premely foolish. 

And yet, as one recalls the condition of parties when 
the fuse was kindled at Sumter, there were fearful chances 
against liberty. No man by the mere force of ideas would 
have dared to take the chances. They were in favor of 
continued Southern supremacy. A united South and a 
divided North, with all the accustomed political enginery 
in secret agreement to paralyze the Northern conscience 
and the Northern hand, gave promise of a short outbreak 
and a quick peace of despotism. When I look back upon 
that period I feel as he felt who had traveled in the 
darkness of the night across a bridge, when he learned 
what a risk he had run. When he reached the house 
of the gate-keeper he was saluted with exclamations of 
amazement, and asked how he came over. In the morn- 
ing he was taken out to look at the bridge. Every plank 
had been stripped off from it, only the stringer in the 
middle remained, and below was a chasm a hundred feet 
deep with a roaring torrent rushing through it; and along 
that single beam his sagacious and sure-footed horse had 
walked, in the dead of night, and borne him safely across. 

So came we over the great abyss and peril of that early 
period of the war. 

No man could have anticipated that heaven-sent freshet, 
that flood of popular patriotism, that came from no man 
knows where, rolling in upon the Pharaohs of the day. It 
was this, of which there were no prognostications, no 
calculations, and no expectations, that saved us. The 
arrangements of that perilous opening of the war were 
such as to give every promise of success to the conspirators 
of slavery. 

There were, even down to within a year of the close of 
the struggle, such despondencies, at times, that, had the 
South been wise, she could have asked a truce, and laid 
down her arms upon conditions that would have renewed 
her power substantially, and for a long period held liberty 
paralyzed in the arms of compromise. That the South 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DAY. 795 

believed in its cause was our safety. Had Southern men 
had less faith that they were right they would have given 
up earlier, and given up before their property was wasted, 
voluntarily, on conditions such that this nation would 
have been stranded on sand-bars at the mouth of the 
river, instead of sailing as now full and free on the fathom- 
less ocean. From this peril we were delivered by the 
tenacity of Southern leaders for the cause which did not 
seem to us right; and they were made tenacious by a love 
of their own liberty and independence, although it seemed 
to us that they were standing for the slavery of others. 
This was one of those instances of the concentric working 
of Providence in which the exterior sphere seems to be 
human and the interior divine. 

IV. The Fourth Period was that of the close of the war, 
which brought three pre-eminent perils — that of the army, 
first; that of reconstruction, second; and that of taxation, 
third. The experience of the world would have led men 
to prophesy, as they did prophesy, a series of disasters of 
the most dangerous kind upon the dispersion of a million 
and a half of men who had learned their lessons of morals 
and politics in the camp. It was supposed that there would 
be great violence breaking out on every side from men who 
lacked occupation, who had been broken off from honor- 
able industries, who had been supplanted by others that 
had taken their places, and who should come home in 
great multitudes to suffer want. Insubordination under 
civic rule, on the part of those who had been accustomed to 
look with indifference upon magistrates and with respect 
only upon military officers — who despised men without 
swords and worshiped warriors — this might have been ex- 
pected. Dissoluteness and vagabondage we had a right to 
fear. But, so far from the realization of such fears, I aver 
that there never was an instance of the subsidence with so 
little disorder of an army that had possessed such great 
power, and had dominated a continent, headed by in- 
numerable leaders not lacking in ambition. As the rains 
which fall upon the mountains melt the snow, dissolving 
the avalanche, and each drop, confluent, finds its own 



796 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

channel down the mountain-side to water the meadows 
below and bring summer harvests; so this great army 
found its way back again without one riot, without a single 
uproar, without a solitary recorded trouble. It gave us 
exceeding trouble to gather this million and a half of 
men; but to disband them and send them home, many of 
them maimed, many of them poor, and many of them 
workless, cost not a proclamation nor an edict! 

Military officers, in whom it is supposed resides a per- 
petual ambition for power, have been our very exemplars 
of peace. Our first President and our last were elected 
from the fields of war. Washington, though a man of war, 
is less thought of to-day in this nation as the commander 
of our armies than as the man who taught us peace. And 
Grant, who by his skill and indomitable courage wrought 
for us final deliverance, sat in the Presidential chair, not 
without some mistakes — for he was human — but without 
one single tendency to military rule, and with as absolute 
respect for civil law as has been manifested by any Presi- 
dent from the time of Washington down to this day. 

As I recede, along the adjoining fields of Jersey, from 
the great city, I speedily lose sight of the masts, of the 
warehouses, and of the spires themselves; and yet when I 
have gone so far that the last glimmer of these things is 
lost, the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge stand full and high 
in the air, conspicuous. As time goes on we shall forget 
that which called down such a storm of fury upon the 
name of Grant; and when all incidental and collateral 
things have gone below the horizon, his name and just 
fame will stand towering high in the air, unobscured and 
imperishable! 

There was not a single military riot. There was scarcely 
a suspicion of military ambition. There was not a sus- 
picion of the purport of meetings multitudinous. The 
Army of the Tennessee, the Army of the Potomac, and 
Divisions of every name, meet from year to year, and 
neither the papers of the one side nor those of the other 
have ever charged them with coming together for pur- 
poses of ambition. The Grand Army of the Republic, 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DAY. 797 

without a banner, a rifle, or a sword, camping down in the 
field of peace, has not brought upon itself any suspicion of 
military aspirations; and yet, what people ever acquitted 
themselves more bravely in war ? What people, on both 
sides, ever hung up more trophies in the halls of memory? 
What deeds of heroism have been recorded to be remem- 
bered as long as history shall last! And there is no sus- 
picion that those on the side either of the North or the 
South have learned the nefarious arts of Catiline, or 
plotted any conspiracy against liberty. Nay, the reaction 
has been so extreme that I fear gratitude to the soldier is 
in danger of being left out, forgotten. The man without 
an arm, standing before the government, has less chance 
than he who has two arms. The man who has lost a 
foot cannot travel so fast after place and support as the 
man who has two feet. The thunder of battle is dead, 
and the sense of safety is swallowing up our gratitude to 
the soldier-boy that comes crippled home, and is obliged 
to ask his fellow citizens for opportunity to earn a liveli- 
hood, having given to his country the substance and mar- 
row of his life. 

Next to the military period of danger, on the subsidence 
of the war, came the danger of reconstruction — a danger 
so great that persons not accustomed to the usages and 
the temper of a free and intelligent people prophesied un- 
mitigated mischief. Their prophecies happily have all 
perished on their utterance. The first great peril arising 
from this source was the condition of the blacks through- 
out the South. Four millions of men had been suddenly 
uprooted from a state of slavery. The South had felt that 
its industry rested upon the shoulders of the blacks. The 
welfare of innumerable families in the South was made 
dependent upon ownership of these people. Therefore, 
to give them liberty was to plow and subsoil the whole 
South. It was to turn over its fences, bury its orchards, 
destroy its houses, so to speak, introduce a new political 
economy, and change the whole means of support of the 
Southern people. Was that a thing easy to do, trying the 
future by any lesson that has been taught us by the past ? 



798 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

It was a thing that could not be risked upon any vaticina- 
tion. It found its own way out, however. A supreme act 
of justice set the slaves free; but no counsel or wisdom of 
man alone has made their freedom so harmless to them- 
selves and so harmless to their late masters as it has been. 
That nature which hath God in it hath done this. Meas- 
uring by abstract rectitude and justice, you may blame this, 
that, and the other act on the part of the South; but on 
the whole, considering the difficulties which arose, the 
multitudes that were concerned, the state in which the 
war left citizenship, the revolutionized condition of things, 
in the light of ordinary human nature, or of the expecta- 
tions which men found on human nature — considering 
these things, the conduct of the great mass of black people 
in the South has been without a parallel for industry and 
for general kindliness. Regard, too, the conduct of the 
whites who were recently their masters! When I put one 
over against the other I hardly know on which side my 
wonder preponderates. If there have been mischiefs, cru- 
elties, and oppressions, look for the perpetrators of them 
not to the men that owned slaves and controlled public 
sentiment at the South; look, rather, to "the poor white 
trash" that never owned slaves, and that were but a little 
above the colored man, being degraded and brutalized by 
the necromancy of the accursed system of slavery itself ! 

Much work is yet to be done in the South. Much 
cruelty is yet to be looked for there. He who expects 
Israel to come out of the hands of Pharaoh and go into 
the promised land inside of forty years expects without 
knowledge and without good reason. I do not expect the 
blacks ever to come to their full possession of liberty and 
civility until they have had the equivalent of the Jews' forty 
years of pilgrimage. For saying so ten years ago I was 
held in derision and contempt by the Republican press at 
large; but we shall have, at our leisure, time to revise all 
such judgments as that. Whenever you can construct 
human nature by a vote, or change it by legislation; when- 
ever you can handle men as the potter handles clay, then 
you may by an edict convert slaves into intelligent men 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DAY. 799 

instantly, blowing them, as you would soap-bubbles, into 
objects of beauty ! But human nature is the toughest 
thing that man ever works on. To take four million men of 
an inferior race, educated in the school of slavery, and, by 
a constitutional vote of the people, make them as if they 
had never been ignorant slaves, is impossible; and if men 
have expected it, it only shows to what overfed enthusiasm 
they were led. 

Men grow ; and of all growths there is nothing that 
grows so slowly as manhood. The reason why it grows 
so slowly is that there is so much of it, that it is so subtle, 
and that it is so precious in its results — for the best things 
are the scarcest, and are the longest in coming to perfec- 
tion. 

Then, next, was the peril arising from the anomalous 
position of the rebellious States themselves. After such 
rude embraces as they had experienced, after such ruinous 
conflicts as they had gone through, and after such intense 
bitterness as had been aroused, men said, " It contravenes 
every canon of experience to suppose that you can have 
more than provinces at the South to be governed by im- 
perial rulers." Certainly it was necessary, in their anoma- 
lous condition, that they should be made to respect the 
government by the power of the military; but were there 
ever before so many high-spirited provinces held in quiet- 
ness by so few men ? Caesar could send to Gaul an army of 
trained veterans, and slay an hundred thousand men, and 
have peace; but there were not enough soldiers in all the 
South to constitute the fraction of an army; and those that 
were there were there not for the sake of overawing the pop- 
ulation, but simply to give that part of the population who 
earnestly meant peace and obedience to the national law 
advantage over the rude men at the bottom of society 
ready for any turbulence. I bear witness that the leading 
men of the South, as a general thing, were men who kept 
faith. When they made covenants they stood upon those 
covenants; and whatever have been their sufferings — and 
no people have gone through more — the Southern people 
themselves, being the victims of the system of slavery 



8oo PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

which led them into a career of war and ruin, have carried 
themselves with a gallantry, with a courage, yes, and often- 
times with a chivalry, which has not been surpassed by 
any other people, and which might have given us patterns 
of self-devotion worthy of our following. Their prospects 
have been ruined; their homes and houses have been 
burned; their property and money were thrown into the 
throat of war; their slaves were not only liberated, but 
were in many cases placed over their heads with their 
votes by which they turned everything bottom side up; 
States were furrowed and subsoiled. Where have ever 
been found so many people, as high spirited as they, who 
have borne such things with a patience and self-govern- 
ment more creditable to human nature than they? Bear 
me witness, that so long as they tampered with the Con- 
stitution, so long as they were enemies of the working 
man, so long as they sought to undermine justice, so long 
as they undertook to poison the conscience of the North 
■ — so long, without fear or favor, I denounced their course; 
but now the great wheel of God's providence has turned 
around, and those evils are swept away never to appear 
again, in this generation at any rate, I look out upon the 
South, and my heart turns to them, not only with that love 
which I bear to every other heart in this land of mine, but 
with a zeal and admiration which I never felt before; and 
I say that the conduct of leading Southern men since the 
war has largely redeemed their misconduct before the war. 

But that peril of reconstruction has passed. Some med- 
ication, some surgery, there has been, I admit; legislation 
and constitutional amendments have performed a needed 
task; but the great forces of nature, I assert, have done far 
more for the reconstruction of the South than our legislation has. 

When, by some accident, a man's leg has been splintered, 
he calls surgeons to attend him, and they all agree that 
the parts shall be put together as speedily as possible; but 
whether the leg shall be afterwards treated by homoeopa- 
thy or hydropathy or allopathy they are divided in opin- 
ion, and a dispute is waged over the man that lies suffering. 
Meanwhile, nature takes things into her own hand, and 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DAY. 8oi 

knits the bones, and heals the limb; and by the time the 
doctors have come to an agreement the man is able to rise 
and kick them all out ! 

There was even a more perilous danger in connection 
with the period of reconstruction — the danger of infamous 
dishonesty. So sure was it thought to be that this great 
nation, which came out of the war bearing an absolute 
burden of more than four thousand million dollars, the 
interest on which was to be paid by a universal taxation, 
would flinch, and refuse to bend its shoulders to the work, 
that certain men rushed to the front with theories of what 
was substantially "greenback" repudiation; and rushed 
to find no following ! In the earlier periods of recon- 
struction the question arose as to whether the bonds that 
had been given by this government for the maintenance 
of our armies should be paid, and paid in full. That was 
the question which came before this country in the North- 
west, in the far West, clear to the Pacific Ocean, in the great 
intermediary valleys, and on these shores where people 
who pinched their money first pinched the rocks to get it; 
and in every quarter, North, South, East, and West, there 
was but one substantial result. The voices of the men 
who favored repudiation, like the sound of an evil bird 
retreating into the depths of the forest, piped softer and 
softer, and finally died away in the distance; while the 
voice that thundered forth from the nation was: "The 
promises of the Government by which it has maintained 
unity and liberty must be kept." And for that result we 
are as much indebted to our foreign population as to our 
native population. To their honor and credit I say that 
our foreign citizens, or those who have become citizens 
here, having been born in other lands, stood by the honor 
of the republic, and saved the nation from the disgrace of 
a shameless dishonesty ! 

Ten thousand mishaps may flow from their coming 
among us; but the benefits which arise from the presence 
here of those who have come from old countries and are 
settled among us are a hundred to one to the mishaps and 
inconveniences that result from their mingling with us. 



8o2 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

And there should be a monument, if it would not be an 
imputation upon their honesty, to commemorate the fact 
that they stood up for the integrity of the' nation when 
they knew that every dollar paid for taxes would be so 
wrung by the sweat of their brow out of the fields that 
they tilled. 

So, then, when you take those three dangers, the danger 
of repudiation, the danger of reconstruction, and the dan- 
ger arising from the anomalous condition of the people of 
the South, — were there ever three such great problems 
brought forward to be solved at such a time, involving so 
many appeals to the bad side of human nature, at a time of 
transition, always a time of disorder, — were there ever 
three such great problems so peacefully solved ? It was 
not the zeal of senators, or of scholars, nor was it the 
voice of the pulpit, but it was the sound moral instincts 
in the great thinking mass of the common people, that 
developed those grand results which have followed the 
war ! 

I emphasize this because I wish to make the point of 
this discourse, that it is safe to give liberty to an intelli- 
gent common people. They form a parliament before 
which the weightiest and most transcendent questions of 
ethics may be safely brought for adjudication. 

V. The Perils of the Hour are the last that I shall men- 
tion — and they are the least. Whatever may betide the 
questions that are now at issue, they will result in nothing 
worse than simple transient mischief, moral, political, and 
civil. The foundations are settled. The future policy of 
this nation, whichever hands undertake to hold the helm, 
is assured. I would rather that the nation, which has been 
rescued by the great Republican party, and borne through 
all the shoals and whirls and troubles of the reconstruct- 
ive period, for which they are now receiving more curses 
than kindnesses, and whose mistakes are multiplied before 
the eyes of men, while their wisdom is little thought of — 
I would rather that this nation should remain in their 
hands, if they are worthy to hold the helm; but if not, 
give me a hand that can hold the helm, whosesoever it is. 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DA Y. 803 

If their light is extinguished along the coast, and they 
have no longer power to guide the ship of state to a safe 
harbor, let other lights be kindled. We cannot afford to 
wait for any party. The nation is more important than 
any party. It is not, then, any particular peril of a change 
of Administration that is to be feared. I look upon that 
with interest, but still with equanimity. 

But there is a danger from suppressed repudiation. 
When children have the measles, and when after an appro- 
priate time saffron and all the other drinks fail to bring 
them out, the doctors shake their heads and call them 
suppressed measles; and the measles suppressed are more 
dangerous than when brought out. And suppressed re- 
pudiation is all the more dangerous than any open and 
avowed repudiation. Whenever, in any nation, there is 
such an attempt to tamper with standards that the moral 
sense of men is bewildered, and liberty is given to unprin- 
cipled men at large to cheat, to be unfaithful to obliga- 
tions, to refuse the payment of honest debts — wherever 
that takes place, it is all the worse if done with the per- 
mission of law ! I hate the devil riding on a law worse 
than I do the devil riding v^^ithout a law under him. Who- 
ever tampers with established standards tampers with the 
very marrow and vitality of public faith. 

What would become of this land if all standards were 
tampered with ? What if the legislature this year should 
ordain that a foot should consist of only ten inches, and 
next year, the power being taken out of their hands by 
the other party, it should be ordained that a foot should 
measure fourteen inches; and so every three or five years 
the standard should be changed on which immense and 
innumerable contracts were based, it being necessary for 
such contracts to follow the alteration, sometimes damag- 
ing and sometimes unjustly favoring the contractors, and 
enabling men, under the shield of party and of law, to 
commit fraud as if it were an equity ? What if the pound 
weight should be tampered with, and it should be or- 
dained now that a pound is ten ounces, now that it is 
twelve, and now that it is fifteen ? What if the quart and 



8o4 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

pint should be tampered with, and made to differ to-mor- 
row from what they are to-day ? What if the yard- 
measure should be tampered with ? What if all the 
standards on which business is conducted should be sub- 
ject to fluctuations and caprice, so that no man could tell 
what was right or just, and so that ethical questions, with 
all their casuistry, should swarm as mosquitoes in summer 
about a swamp, or insects in a country tavern ? What 
chance would there be for honesty, for integrity, or for 
solid prosperity ? 

The danger into which we are running is hidden under 
the mystery of finance and the currency. All money is 
but a representative of property. As now, by facility of 
intercourse, all the world is one open market, the need of 
one and the same standard of money, uniform, universal, 
and unalterable, becomes imperious ! Gold is the world's 
standard. Gold is the universal measure of value. Other 
kinds of money there are — silver, copper, paper — but they 
all must conform to gold and be measured by it, and be 
interchangeable with it, in fixed and definite proportions. 
Gold is king in commerce. All other money must repre- 
sent gold. No vote of legislature can change the nature 
of commerce, the nature of property, the nature of its 
representative in money, or the relative superiority or in- 
feriority of different currencies. Gold came to its suprem- 
acy as a representative of property by the long established 
consent of mankind. Congress cannot change it for the 
world, nor even for this nation except upon past transac- 
tions. It may give impunity to men to cheat confiding 
creditors, but it cannot rule the value of currency in all 
future transactions. The crime of paying a debt in a 
currency inferior in value to that in which it was con- 
tracted, base at all times and anywhere, has a deeper guilt 
and a baser infamy in our case. When in our mortal 
struggle capitalists were solicited to lend their money to 
us on the faith of the nation, we were too glad, most 
grateful for their aid. Then they were not grasping and 
swollen usurers. O, no; they were benefactors ! We re- 
joiced in their bounty, and gave thanks for their confiding 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DA Y. S05 

faith in our national honesty. Now, our dangers past, we 
revile them, finding no epithets too violent, and strive to 
pay them, not gold for the gold they lent our misery, but 
in a dishonest measure of an inferior metal. In the court 
of the commercial world's conscience we shall be con- 
victed of endeavoring to cheat the men who came to our 
rescue in the dark day. This Congress would not have 
existed, nor any government of the United States, but for 
the strength given to our armies by foreign capitalists; and 
now to return their aid by a base treachery is to deserve 
an infamy as deep as the lowest depths of hell. 

But woe to those men, bull-headed, without eyes, who 
are attempting to undermine the integrity and simplicity 
of the nation by locating discussion in that most difficult 
point for ordinary men to understand — in finance; in the 
history and meanings of currency ! I do not care what 
width and liberty you give to greenbacks or metallic cur- 
rency; only, there is a congress of time, and a congress of 
the world; and at the present, and for the future, gold, in 
certain definite proportions, has been made the standard; 
and it is the standard in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, and in 
America, north, south, east, and west; and it is so, not be- 
cause Congress voted it, and courts adjudicated it, but 
because the human race are united on this one point: that 
gold represents property, and that it is a universal, un- 
changing standard. 

Now put whatever else you will as subsidiary, collateral, 
auxiliary, but do not change that standard, either by a 
suppressed assault upon the thing itself, or by attempting 
to equalize with it that which is not equal to it. No act of 
Congress can ever make one pound equal to two pounds. 
No act of Congress can ever make a thing inferior equal to a 
superior. Silver coin must be made proportionate to the 
value of gold, as determined in the open markets of the 
world ! All paper currency must be convertible into gold. 
Any other course is to teach men to cheat by law ; it is to 
teach honest men to cheat without knowing that they 
cheat ; it is to teach' fraud by legislation ; it is a high 
crime and misdemeanor; and if men in Congress do not 



8o6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

know it, what are they there for? When the blind are 
leading the blind, and they all fall into the ditch together, 
it will not help them to find that the ditch is silver-lined. 

The attempt to cheat capitalists by paying bonds in 
silver coin of less value than gold is hardly worse than the 
other attempt to derange and poison business by a re- 
newal of the plague of greenbacks. No paper currency 
has any intrinsic value: no government can give it lawful 
power. Gold is its only basis. It is worth what it can 
command in gold — the royal metal ! 

How pitiable is the plea, that if greenbacks were good 
enough for war they are good enough for peace ! That if 
they bought munitions, paid debts, purchased lands, 
cleared farms, built railroads, and carried the business of 
a continent through a continued and desperate peril, they 
are good enough now. Is it true, then, that the medicine 
that carries a man through his sickness is good enough 
for food after he gets well ? Shall a man walk on crutches 
all his days because they helped him while lame ? An in- 
convertible paper has its value in the promise of gov- 
ernment to pay its face in gold as soon as it is able. It is 
the reasonableness of that hope that gives it value. As 
the hope of speedy payment in gold receded, the green- 
back depreciated. As soon as prosperity gave promise 
that the government would soon pay in gold, dollar for 
dollar, greenbacks appreciated, until now they are worth 
nearly their face in gold. A debased or enfeebled cur- 
rency may be the desperate necessity of war, but it is the 
infatuation of ignorance, or an insanity of dishonesty, to 
pour out inconvertible paper in peace, or to attempt to 
make short-legged silver keep step with gold ! 

Every father who has a family to bring up, and who 
therefore has a greater interest in integrity than in every- 
thing else on earth; every mother that has a child to rear, 
who represents the stand-point of supremest wisdom, and 
who looks upon the universe as merely an instrument for 
rearing that child; every teacher that has under his care 
the young, whose minds are to be developed; every young 
man whose ambitions are honorable, every man who loves 



PAST PERILS AND THE PERIL OF TO-DAY. 807 

his country more than his own estate; every editor whose 
heart throbs with patriotism, — every such person ought to 
stand up in open and unequivocal testimony against the 
infamy of this suppressed repudiation which is tending to 
destroy honesty in our land. Not because it will work a 
great while; not because it is going to make such a differ- 
ence in the long run with silver and gold — that is not 
worthy of consideration: but because such a nation as 
this, with such an ancestry and such a history; that has 
been carried through such an illustrious career in the 
formation of institutions and in the maintenance of them; 
that is a beacon light to the world, and whose example is 
emancipating France and transforming England; that has 
gone through a war and come out of it with such clean, 
unambitious hands, and is seeking to cement its people 
more and more firmly together, — ought not to be thus be- 
trayed by miscreant men to do an act which will make it a 
scoffing and a by-word all over the world to the end of 
time. 

It is not a question, therefore, which belongs to ordinary 
politics: it belongs to the national conscience; it belongs to 
mankind. There ought to be a dividing line running be- 
tween man and man; and from this time forth the cry 
should be, "Who is on the side of honesty and integrity?" 
This is a time for lauding with enthusiasm those who are 
in favor of truth and uprightness, and for thundering 
indignation against those who would overthrow national 
integrity. I do not care greatly for crops, for cattle, for 
merchandise, for houses, or for lands, but I do care for the 
reputation of my country; I care for my kind; I care for 
the memory of our fathers who have left us this fair herit- 
age; I care for my God. 

We shall go through this struggle. God who has de- 
livered us in so many perils will also deliver us in this. 
Have faith in God. 

Do not give way to the folly of despondency. The peo- 
ple are to be trusted; but in order to be trusted they must 
be instructed. A people of integrity and intelligence are 
competent to anything which is necessary in the life of 



8o8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

nations. A free, educated, and religious people are the 
surest in peace, the bravest in war, the most enterprising 
in business, and the strongest in morality, with more en- 
thusiasm, more wisdom, more sovereignty — and that, too, 
for emergencies — than crowns or aristocracies have. The 
history of this nation is a voice that ought to carry cheer 
to all the struggling nations of the earth. You are not 
seeking for an illusory thing when you are seeking for a 
free republic — only remember that enduring republics 
must be based on rectitude, on intelligence, and on pa- 
tience; and must be maintained not by the hand, except 
in the direct exigencies, but by the head and the heart. 

In all these great opportunities our nation has gone 
right; and the nation will go right. Like a ship against 
which storms are leagued, it rolled heavily, it was dashed 
upon by overwhelming waves, only to rear up its unharmed 
hull, and, in darkness or in light, against the elements to 
hold on its way, taking no counsel of storm or of dark- 
ness, but of the compass that lay silent before it, an unerr- 
ing guide. The Word of God and the righteousness 
thereof have been our compass, and have borne us through 
storms and troubles, and will still bear us safely; for a free 
people, standing on foundations of religious liberty, are 
strong enough to brave Time and the World ! 

Let us not, therefore, have any such war cries by the 
way as, " Liberty, equality, fraternity"; but let our war 
cry be, " Integrity, Intelligence, Liberty." With that 
legend we will fight the World and Time, and win all right 
things. 



ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE 
ARMY OF THE POTOMAC,* 

Springfield, Mass., June 5, 1878. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen: Before I utter a word 
of that which I have prepared, allow me to respond in 
one single particular to the remarks that have just fallen 
from General Slocum [the President of the Society, who in 
introducing Mr. Beecher had spoken of his speeches in 
England]. He is right in saying that the weight of the 
English nation was against us in the war: but he inad- 
vertently phrased it wrong when he said that the common 
people of England were opposed to us. It was just they 
that held the government of England in check. But for 
the great mass of the common people of England, we 
should have been involved in foreign difficulties which, 
added to our other difficulties, might have sunk us — though 
I do not believe that this Union would have gone down, 
even with the South and England on top of us. \^Greai 
applause^ Of the weavers, of the day-laborers, in all 
central England, I bear this witness : that while the can- 
non were shutting up their doors and bringing the unwel- 
come wolf in at the window, they stood in poverty and 
almost starvation, loyal to the North and faithful to the 
very end. ^Renewed applause^ To the industrial classes 
of England we owe it that Great Britain's hand was not 
added to the treacherous hand of the South in destroying 
the great Union of this land. 

I return my thanks to you, gentlemen, for the honor 
conferred in my appointment to address you upon this oc- 
casion. I do not belong to the number who have forgot- 
ten the weary days of war. There was an early day when 

* At the Ninth Annual Reunion of the Society. 



8io PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

our countrymen in the North looked upon military parades 
as so many masquerades, and upon officers walking the 
streets in uniforms as gay butterflies. There came another 
day and another feeling. We saw our streets filled with 
swift-moving regiments, and cheered their departure to the 
field with profound gratitude and boundless enthusiasm. 
Year by year an officer returned from the field was honored, 
and privates were lauded as brave defenders of their country. 
The wounded and maimed were objects of active sympathy. 

Who will forget the eagerness of each day in the long 
peril, the sickening suspense, the almost heart-breaking, 
the shame and sorrow, the joy and glorious tumult of 
gratulation which accompanied the long history of the 
Army of the Potomac, its disasters, its bloody drawn-bat- 
tles, its delays, its slowly-earned honors, its final victories ? 
The names of Scott, McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, 
Hooker, Meade and Grant ^prolonged and enthusiastic ap- 
plaiise\ are more than names of men — they are the symbols 
of periods in our war history. 

When the war was over, and its heroic men came back 
to civil life, there were no places too good for them, no 
honors too bright. But new growths are pushing up from 
the bottom of society, and the generation that knew you 
is fast passing away. The scenes are growing dim in the 
past and already men are courting popularity by doing 
despite to the army and to the men that saved this nation. 
I am not of their number. \^Applause^ To-day I do 
homage to the heroic men who have saved the Constitu- 
tion, the unity of the States, the honor and power of the 
nation; who have revolutionized the industry and political 
economy of the continent, saved the age from the corrup- 
tions of slavery, secured for labor a noble career, and 
given to the rights of men — of common men, of laboring 
men, the world over — an impulse and guaranty unknown 
before. 

It is said that the pen is mightier than the sword. That 
depends on circumstances, gentlemen. \^Laughter^ Some- 
times the pen, sometimes the sword is mightier: but there 
come times when both together do the work which neither 



AA'MV OF THE POTOMAC. 8ii 

of them can effect alone. If it was the pen that sharpened 
our swords before the war, it has been the sword that has 
sharpened the pen since. \_Applause^ 

It was yours, gentlemen, to belong to a period in which 
we were like to lose all the fruits of civilization. That 
which the school, the pulpit, the forum, had sown, the pen 
could not reap. Then was fulfilled gloriously the prophecy 
of old, and the sword became a sickle, and reaped the 
harvests that were ready to perish ! 

The desire to heal the wounds of war, the wish to con- 
ciliate and reunite those who have been at strife, is both 
humane and patriotic. But the spirit of reconciliation 
may not be wisely guided. It certainly will not be if it 
glozes over the criminality of those who led the country 
into this conflict; if it forgets, or calls by any soft name, 
the crime of disruption and disunion. \^Applaiise?\ The 
virtue and rectitude of the endeavor to maintain unity and 
law must never be forgotten. The value to America and to 
universal civilization of the results of the war must not be 
softened or hid away. \Renezved applause^ It began as a 
war for the union of the United States; it ended as a war 
for emancipation and liberty. It began on the Southern 
part as a war in defense of a civilization based upon slavery; 
it ended as a war for free labor and the laboring man. The 
internal policy of this country was undergoing a change 
fatal to humanity. You have restored it to health ! The 
constitution was wasting away with consumption. Black 
blood was circulated through it. By your surgery the 
danger has passed. Our lungs breathe pure air. Our 
hearts send vitalized blood to every member. Health and 
vigor are restored. The recognition of these truths ought 
not to be, must not be, a cause of offense to anybody. 
\^Applaiise^ Taunts, vainglorious comparisons, deprecia- 
tion of the vigor and bravery of the enemy, and whatever 
springs from hatred, revenge, or selfishness, should be 
buried. But honest truth should be fearlessly spoken. 
The South, however, gentlemen, was wrong. \^Loud cheers, 
swinging of hats, and waving of handkerchief s.\ The North 
was right. [^Renewed cheers, swinging of hats, and waving 



8l2 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

of handkerchiefs^ This must stand out as clear as the sun, 
henceforth and forevermore. \_Great applause?^ YVe admit 
the bravery of Southern men; the gallantry of their offi- 
cers; the skill and genius of their great generals. But it 
was bravery, skill, and genius exerted in a bad cause. 

We admit that, to the men of the South, their cause 
seemed to be that of liberty — that they were sincere and 
honest. But sincerity does not change facts. If their 
minds were darkened to the reality of underlying tenden- 
cies, it is all the more important that history should dis- 
close them. We willingly accredit them with great military 
virtues. But we deny to their leaders, to their cause, all 
political wisdom. The South from 1840 sought wrong 
ends by wrong methods. The war was the result of South- 
ern heresies. In the whole history of human procedure 
there were nevermore blunders committed than by South- 
ern statesmen. The conduct of kings and nobles preceding 
the great French revolution was not more unwise, more 
fatal to their own interests, than the steps taken by the 
South for a quarter of a century before the war. 

These things are of such importance to mankind that 
we cannot afford to let them lie unheeded. We shall not 
reap the fruits of victory if we suffer these things to be 
forgotten. We shall wrong the memory of the dead if we 
admit the equality of those who fell in a good cause and those 
who fell in a bad. \_Applausc^ Personally, one may have 
been as good as another. But, as representatives of a 
great principle, one fought for darkness, and the other for 
light: one strove for slavery, and the other for liberty. 
\^Renewed applause. '\ Admit that they thought themselves 
soldiers of freedom, that does not change the nature of 
things. Men may believe that they are sailing for a safe 
harbor, while great undercurrents are driving them right 
upon the rocks. Whatever was the personal rectitude, 
sincerity, heroism, of the individuals of the Southern army, 
they were swept on by the great under influences of evil 
which overruled their will, and made them the unconscious 
soldiers of despotism. 

We dishonor our dead when we make no distinction be- 



A/?AIV OF THE POTOMAC. 813 

tween those who died for liberty and those who died for 
slavery. \_Applause^ Reconciliation purchased by rubbing 
out the whole meaning of the war, the moral significance 
of its results, the grandeur to mankind of its influences, 
is not a compromise, but surrender. If it brings peace, it 
is the ignominious peace of death. I am willing to strew 
flowers upon the graves of Southern soldiers as men, and 
at appropriate times, under the influence of that generous 
sympathy which we cherish for all mankind; but not as 
soldiers, not as the defenders of a lost cause that was 
rightly lost; not on the same day with the fallen cham- 
pions for liberty ! \^Loud and long continued applause?^ Not 
with my right hand chaplets for soldiers of freedom, and 
my left chaplets for soldiers of disruption, rebellion and 
slavery! S^Tremendous shouts and cheers^ Is it becoming 
that we should by such actions testify to the world that 
the whole difference between slavery and liberty is only 
the difference of the left and right hands — a mere differ- 
ence of degree and not of kind? 

It is for you, gentlemen of the Army of the Potomac, 
to resist such criminal folly: to lift up the true meaning 
of the war so high that no cloud should obscure it; and, as 
by your heroic service you have become an example to 
our youth in courage and self-devotion, so you should be 
their instructors in the everlasting principles of truth, 
equity, and liberty which underlay the war, and without 
which it was not a grand sacrifice, but a gigantic butchery. 
It was gloriously right for you and for the great slumber- 
ing brotherhood of your fallen companions to proffer all 
for the constitution, for the unity of national life; sternly 
refusing to Europeanize this continent, and split it up 
into a swarm of stinging, quarreling States with boundary 
lines that never cooled, with strife forever inflammatory 
and incendiary! The North was bound by the highest rec- 
titude, when the divine opportunity came, to wipe out 
slavery, and by emancipation here to lift the condition of 
labor over the whole world. This is not a matter to be 
muffled up and softened, by us at any rate. \Applause?^ 
It would consign us justly to everlasting contempt to be 



8l4 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ashamed of or indifferent to the brightest page of modern 
history. No war of all time was so needless as that on the 
part of the South, and none so indispensable and honor- 
able as that on the part of the North. 

When Prussia shifted the center of the German Empire 
no great change was wrought in the condition of man- 
kind. The imperial crown of Germany, before in Austria, 
went over to Prussia. That was all. Laws, policies, gov- 
ernments, remained the same. But our great war revolu- 
tionized the affairs of half a continent to the very founda- 
tions. The South was aristocratic. It must inevitably be 
democratic. It had a false system of servile labor. It 
has changed it to free labor. Its whole organization of 
society was affected by its heretical political economy. 
That is regenerated. The springs are changed. The fount- 
ains out of which its life was flowing were poisonous. 
The prophet has thrown salt therein, and they now flow 
with life and health. On these new foundations we greet 
the rising South, and with cordial confidence and fra- 
ternal sympathy rejoice to see her sons again in the halls 
of legislation, and to join with her in a generous emula- 
tion for the future glory and strength of our Union undi- 
vided and indivisible. \^Applause?^ 

With these remarks I dismiss the past, and turn to the 
present and to the future. I have already spoken of the 
changed feeling of the public toward soldiers. It may be 
called the decay of the military spirit in the North. The 
fire which flamed forth for a few years has well-nigh 
burned out. We have returned to our looms, our plows, 
our ships. Our young men are becoming engrossed in 
the arts of peace; and since military life is not profitable 
in the market, nor popular just now in politics, it is dying 
out of our favor and out of public thought. This is 
greatly to be deplored. Some one should speak. Clergy- 
men will not, because they are the messengers of peace. 
Politicians will not, because just now it will lose votes to 
either party that advocates the army; for the slight symp- 
toms of socialistic fever which are creeping upon the labor 
party raise an apprehension that the chief functions of an 



AA'J/y OF THE POTOMAC. 815 

army hereafter will be to defend the order of society 
against the violence of riotous reformers, and against 
tumultuous strikes that interrupt internal commerce and 
carry confusion to ever}/' form of business. But these are 
the very reasons why some one should call public atten- 
tion to the danger of suffering the military spirit of the 
North to decay. 

The history of armies and wars in Europe inspired 
our fathers with a just fear of large standing armies. 
They are dangerous alike in monarchies and in democra- 
cies; but it is by an abuse of a good and necessary thing. 
Things are dangerous in the proportion in which they are 
good. Weakness never alarms men: it is power that 
makes them afraid; and in this world there is nothing 
good that has not power within it. Armies are good; but 
they are powers capable of the utmost evil. 

So long as society is made up of large multitudes of ig- 
norant men who dwell in the sphere of appetite and 
passion, and who are not sensitive to reason and moral 
influence, it must be prepared to deal with such men by 
the motive which they can feel — physical force. If men 
will keep the road by their eye, all the better. If they are 
blinded, or they will not see, then the thorn-hedge must 
be planted on each side of the road, that they may know 
when the-y are stepping off. S^Laughter and applause?\^ 

The world is not yet Christian enough to trust the Ser- 
mon on the Mount as our only policy. If men will not 
respect each other's property, liberty, and rights by moral 
suasion, they must be compelled to do so by physical sua- 
sion. The existence of a well-regulated army stands upon 
the same grounds as the existence of a municipal police, 
or a rural constabulary force. 

[Mr. Beecher, in reading this sentence, substituted "moral" 
for "rural," but immediately discovered his mistake, and said, 
"Moral is not exactly the word to put before constabulary force;" 
and then repeated the sentence with the right word in the right 
place, the audience being greatly amused by the coolness and 
readiness with which he extricated himself from what to some 
persons would have been an embarrassing predicament.] 



8l6 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

To withdraw all physical force from society would leave it 
a prey to lawless and violent men and would bring on a 
carnival of crime. But to secure the best effects of a 
military organization it should be surrounded with a mil- 
itary public spirit. Every soldier should be a citizen, 
every citizen should be a soldier. An army ought not to 
be a body foreign to the community in which it exists, but 
sprung Trom it, belonging to it, and continually returning to 
it, and penetrating it with its own spirit. The citizen ought 
not to go far to become a soldier. If it could be done, it 
would be a wholesome education to require every young 
man to spend two years of his early life in the camp under 
rigorous military education. \_Applause^ Health, regular- 
ity, subordination, prompt obedience, a facile carriage of 
the body, beside the knowledge of military affairs, would, 
in the long run, repay for the abstraction of so much time 
from business. If that may not be thought of in our land, 
then military drill should constitute a part of our whole 
academic system. Every college and every large academy 
should give to its students the knowledge and discipline 
which military life requires. It ought not to be optional. 
It should be a part of duty enforced. There was hope 
at the close of the civil war that this was to be secured. 
Officers of experience were assigned to many of our colleges, 
and arms provided. But it is to be feared that the zeal has 
cooled, and military drill languishes. 

There is to be no more war. This is the thought of men; 
and I believe there will be no more war between the North 
and the South, in this generation. \^Applause?^ If there 
is, you may be sure that it will not be brought on by 
Southern men. \^Latighter and applaiisei\ You may be sure 
that it will not be brought on by Northern soldiers. 
YRcncivcd applause^ You may be sure that it will not be 
brought on by any man who ever did go into the field or 
who ever wants to. \Loiid cheers^ And the feeling of men 
is that there will be no more war. The Indians are far 
away. Not even the biennial armies of the Fenians hover- 
ing along our Northern boundary arouse our fears. Our 
security is assured, and military drill is burdensome. 



A/iA/y OF THE POTOMAC. 817 

The State military system deserves to be more thor- 
oughly developed. For, though it will never secure a pro- 
fessional education of officers and men, it will secure the 
materials out of which, should war come, might be built 
up an efficient army. 

The rise and spread of tastes for manly and vigorous 
exercise of every kind is a matter for gratulation. What- 
ever shall bring men out of dissolving ease, out of routine 
industry, fire their ambition, tighten their muscle, and 
cleanse their brain, should be encouraged. A robust 
and vigorous generation of men will furnish the proper 
material for armies should the times require them; and 
though aptness in the use of weapons, facility in rid- 
ing, and skill in all athletic exercises are not of themselves 
a sufficient training, they yield a preparation by means of 
which military organization can quickly produce good sol- 
diers. 

In the important respect of military training we may 
draw lessons of wisdom from the Southern States. They 
are doing their duty. In almost every Southern State, 
if not in every one, excellent military academies are 
established, and are flourishing. In many the system of 
education will compare favorably with our government 
academy, or with any foreign school for military training. 
For this they are to be commended, and for neglecting it 
we of the North are to be blamed. 

If these views shall seem to any to be an inculcation of a 
warlike spirit, inconsistent with modern civilization and at 
discord with the whole genius of Christianity, I reply that 
in America military education is more likely to prevent 
fighting than to produce it. To prepare for war is often 
the way to prevent war. Those who most ardently long for 
peace — and we count ourselves foremost amongst them — 
will best secure it by cultivating the military spirit. With 
bad and ignorant men impunity is opportunity. 

Wars are among the most grievous burdens which man- 
kind bear. By every just means their frequency should be 
diminished and their scope limited. But wars are inevita- 
ble until justice prevails, until ignorance is enlightened, 



8l8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

until the brutal forces of society are purged out, until in- 
dustry is freed from unjust restraints; and to decry war 
without raising human nature above the animal line is to 
oust the surgeon and leave the cancer. 

We are to bear in mind that as this nation increases 
in population, in resources, and in political power, the 
sources of danger multiply and demand of our people a 
corresponding energy in government, within constitu- 
tional bounds. 

We are approaching a period in which men must con- 
sider the duties and limits, as well as the rights, of prop- 
erty. The wealth of the future is to be without parallel. 
The skies, the sea, the soil, under the discoveries of science, 
are, as it were, recreated. The development of machinery 
has, in effect, multiplied the population ten thousand fold. 
Fortunes are to be amassed, by multitudes of men, of fab- 
ulous magnitude. The combinations of capital are to go 
on beyond the power which we have to foresee and predict. 
Insensibly we are rearing up, under names of commerce, 
vast forces which must become political forces. The rail- 
way system of the United States is one of the grandest de- 
velopments of modern civilization in its relation to con- 
venience and wealth. In its reflex influence it has aug- 
mented, enlarged, the scale of human life. Our feet have 
become wings. We each have the hundred hands of 
Briareus. Time has been augmented. If a penny saved 
is a penny earned, how much more hours, days, and 
months ! The final results, however, are not doubtful. 

But mediately society is developing new problems; it 
is moving through untried ways. Many evils will arise. 
Mistake is the mother of wisdom. We are jealous of po- 
litical power. We will not suffer any man, nor any combi- 
nation of men, to gain and wield all the political power of 
which they are capable. We stop men short of their 
capacity. We compel them to walk between walls, and 
limit their liberty for the sake of greater average liberty. 
But, shall we permit the development of wealth, in few 
hands, especially in the hands of artificial individuals, in 
corporations, or in allied families, without jealousy and 



, • ARAfV OF THE POTOMAC. 819 

without limit ? Minor corporations are hel(J in check by 
salutary laws. But, are continental corporations, the vast 
railways, with enormous capital, liable to exert no dan- 
gerous influence ? At present the rival interests and con- 
flict of these roads are a sufficient check. But will it 
always be so ? The combined capital of four roads run- 
ning westward from the Atlantic must be a thousand 
million dollars. The relation of this gigantic sum to the 
States through which the roads run, to their army of em- 
ploye's, to the Legislatures, and even, indirectly, to the 
constitution of courts and appointment of judges, is but a 
small part of their possible power. The possession of the 
federal government becomes every year more and more an 
object not alone of ambition but of commercial impor- 
tance. 

The days are near at hand when money is to bear a re- 
lation to politics scarcely yet suspected, notwithstanding 
our recent experiences of corruption. If it were in the 
interest of these four vast corporations that a certain policy 
should be pursued, and that certain men should be put in 
power to execute them, their concentrated councils and 
their enormous wealth and influence would go far to coun- 
terbalance all resistance. I do not assail the system of the 
general management of railroads. They are young, they 
are lion cubs; and it is wise to consider, while we play 
with them as kittens, what they will do when their nails 
and teeth are grown and their haunches are strong ! \_Ap- 
plause and laughter^ 

While the developments of enterprise and. wealth are 
giving extraordinary force to the top of society, there has 
already set in a movement below, of the great mass of 
workingmen, which cannot at present be calculated. We 
may be sure of two general results: (i) That these social- 
istic movements will not, in the end, secure those radical 
changes in society which they are now avowedly seeking; 
and (2) that they will become a disturbing force, both in 
the realm of industry and of politics, in the vain endeavor 
which they will make to secure those ends. 

The movement, which is variously denominated commun- 



820 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ism, socialism, or the labor party, or workingmen's party, is 
not of American origin. It was born in European coun- 
tries, and there it is wide-spread. At present in America it 
is in the hands largely of our immigrant population. But 
it has behind it, in Europe, a vast sympathetic force. It 
has the vigor of youth and the intensity of fanaticism on its 
side. It has more. It seeks some ends that ought to be 
gained. It aims at some wrongs that ought to be re- 
dressed. There are changes in society which selfishness 
will resist, but which must inevitably take place. In these 
respects it has strength. Its social philosophy, if the crude 
theories may be dignified with the name, is its weakest 
point. 

The attempt to reorganize industry, commerce and gov- 
ernment, not by gradual unfolding, but upon a general 
theory, involving a radical reconstruction, is an absurdity 
only this side of insanity. There is no danger in the final 
results; but intermediately there is great danger. The 
movement is likely to draw to itself the indolent, the cor- 
rupt, the industrious poor, not enlightened, the laboring 
men by whom the great manufacturing interests of the 
world are conducted, and who are without real estate or 
capital. It will tend to organize labor as distinguished 
from capital in an antagonistic spirit. It will seek to resist 
the established methods of industry and commerce, by 
strikes, by unions, whose interior will embody the most 
absolute despotism known to mankind — for labor-unions 
are the worst forms of despotism that ever were bred by 
the human mind. \^Applause?^ It will bring to bear upon 
parties an influence which will corrupt political doctrines, 
breed demagogues like the frogs of Egypt, enfeeble the 
laws and emasculate the administration of government. 
Should times grow prosperous, it seems likely that these 
tendencies will for a while subside. But with every period 
of general distress these tendencies will break out. 

In much that is involved in this great movement I have 
profound sympathy. Society is far from perfect. The 
old leaven is to be purged out, and the new leaven put in. 
I recognize the right of the champions of industry, even 



ARMY OF THE POTOMAC. 821 

the extremists, to discuss their philosophy, and to empty 
all the instruments of persuasion and conviction which we 
employ in resisting them. 

But, gentlemen, it is easy to foresee, in the light of what 
has already happened, that the nation for the next score of 
years, at least, is liable to pass through stormy times, and 
that the law will need not only a wise head, but a strong 
hand, that disorder may not run to riot, and that the pas- 
sions of men may not destroy the peace and welfare of 
society. 

In the first instance, each State will employ its police 
and constabulary force; then it will fall back upon its 
volunteer soldiery. But there may again come times in 
which an enraged mob will submit to the regular army of 
the United States when the militia would only enrage it 
the more. Indeed, if soldiers are to be employed at all in 
aid of civil administration, the trained soldiers of the fed- 
eral army, under regular officers, are in every way better 
than militia, be they ever so good. \^Applause.'\ They are 
likely to be more skillful, more self-possessed, more humane, 
more efficient than the extemporized soldiers of the State. 

Those who quake with dread at the mention of a stand- 
ing army are under the influence of old prejudices, based 
upon European experience. Standing armies in the hands 
of ambitious monarchs, in the midst of a multitude of 
contiguous and jealous nations, are not to be the types of 
American armies. In the whole history of our govern- 
ment there has never been a disturbance or even a threat 
or suspicion of danger from the profession of arms in the 
regular army. Our most eminent officers have been pro- 
found lovers of peace. There has never been an accusa- 
tion of plot or plan to augment their power or to usurp 
any function of government. We have had a boiling and 
bubbling caldron often, and our private citizens have 
brought fuel to it; our demagogues have roared, our poli- 
ticians have plotted, our statesmen have plunged the coun- 
try into blunders and whelmed it in war; but the army 
and the great generals whose names are our glory have 
never brought on a disturbance; have always counseled 



82 2 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

for peace; have extricated the country from its embarrass- 
ments and dangers; and have, by their uniform and uni- 
versal prudence, respect for law, and good fellowship, 
proved themselves to be safer guides than have been our 
civil leaders. \^Great applause \ Since the founding of this 
government, I challenge the production of a single mis- 
chief-making military man. If any names are recalled of 
generals who have been rash and dangerous, in every in- 
stance they will be found to be extemporized generals, 
made out of professional politicians. \_Laitghtcy ami ap- 
plause?^ Officers and soldiers are the very men who are 
above all others friends of peace. Caucus and Congress 
are bellicose; the army it is that is a national peace so- 
ciety. 

And yet no class of men of equal attainments and char- 
acter and general ability are as severely criticised, as in- 
tentionally underrated, as unceremoniously crippled and 
abused, as our soldiers. 

This nation is indebted to the West Point Military Acad- 
emy for as noble a band of graduates as the world can 
produce. \^Applause?\ The standard of honor is nowhere 
higher. Respect and reverence for law and liberty are 
nowhere more profound. Scrupulous fidelity to duty is 
nowhere more nearly a religion, and the honor of honesty, 
the Jionor of honesty, the Honor of Honesty, is nowhere so 
signally illustrated as in the graduates of the West Point 
Military Academy. What university, what college, what 
theological seminary, can point to its two thousand grad- 
uates and say, "There has never been an instance of dis- 
honesty in the administration of public moneys".'' The 
only institution in this country that can say this is that 
academy. And yet this noble cradle of noble men has 
never been pampered and dandled. Funds have been 
grudgingly voted for its bare subsistence; improvements 
have been resisted; it has been treated with suspicion and 
prejudice; and it has wrought out its unexampled results, 
not by abundance of means, but by the devotion of its 
corps of professors and teachers under the rigor of a 
financial system which has carried economy to stinginess. 



A/iA/V OF THE POTOMAC. 823 

What, then, is the attitude of the United States army- 
to-day? The smallest in proportion to the population 
and the territory which it guards of any army on the 
globe ! It has been in the field almost without rest for 
twenty years. It is scattered along a vast frontier, in 
small companies, watching night and day Mexican thieves, 
or fighting savages; marching through trackless wastes, 
in severest winter storms, or scorched by summer on arid 
plains; yielding up its Canbys and its Custers. \_Prolongcd 
applause^ It has been made the scapegoat of bad men. 
And all this while it is assailed in the rear by hounding 
politicians, who care nothing for its honor, who would re- 
trench its numbers, diminish its revenues, and make hard 
and bitter the lives of men who have served their country 
at pains and perils which would have appalled the stoutest 
heart of the self-denying heroes of caucus and Congress. 

Gentlemen of the Army of the Potomac: You repre- 
sent but one army of that great host that delivered this 
land from slavery and disorder and restored peace to all 
our borders. You have earned your honors by the highest 
services which a citizen can render to his country. 

This is the one illustrious day of the year that is wholly 
yours. Again you are soldiers of the Republic. The past 
revisits you. It reveals its hidden meaning. You stand 
ens*hrined in memories that are sacred. You recall the 
multitudes that were, but are not, for God hath taken 
them. If life has dealt hardly with you, to-day you will 
forget it. If sometimes, in pain and poverty, you are 
tempted to think yours a hard lot and men ungrateful, 
you will to-day rise above these weaknesses, and with 
cleansed eye will see the heritage of honor and glory laid 
up for y^ou. But you are not forgotten by thousands of 
sincere souls over all the land, that mention your names 
in the most sacred place on earth — the place of household 
prayer. Maimed, impoverished, neglected, you are not 
lame, nor poor, nor lost to memory. 

In the light of this day I behold the genius of our coun- 
try, casting upon you the calm light of the future, and 



824 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

pointing you to clouds of witnesses, heroes who have 
dared to offer their lives for their country and their kind, 
and who feel for you the eternal sympathy of heroes for 
heroes. The long campaign is almost closed. The march 
draws near to its end. When from afar your ear shall 
catch, what no other in your darkened tent may hear, the 
last long roll, then advance. Overthrow the last enemy, 
which is Death. Then hear from the lips of the eternal 
God the words that crown you with glory and immor- 
tality — " Hail, and welcome ! " 

At the close of Mr. Beecher's oration there were loud calls for 
General Hooker, who said : — 

"Mr. President, Comrades, Audience: I am sorry to disap- 
point you ; but if you expect that I will say one syllable after the 
address you have just listened to, you are very much mistaken. 
That address was good enough to last a long time. Study its 
lessons, and digest them, I doubt if more home truths can be 
found in any discourse of the same length since the records of 
this country began." 

General Henry A. Barnum here rose, and said : — 

"I propose that the wise and timely address of Henry Ward 
Beecher shall be recognized in some special manner beyond our 
glad applause: and I move, Mr. President, that every member of 
the Society of the Army of the Potomac, and every loyal person 
present, rise to his feet and, upon a signal from you, in a unan- 
imous and quiet voice say, ' I thank you.' " \Applause?[ 

In accordance with this motion the whole audience rose, and 
in an impressive manner said, "I thank you;" after which Mr. 
Beecher came forward and said : 

"I have the advantage of you all; I have three thousand 
thanks, and there is on my part but one 'I thank you' to divide 
among so many. But may it be like the Scripture loaf; that 
started five, but it held out for five thousand." 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT.* 



"And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the 
face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the 
bounds of their habitation ; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they 
might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of 
us." — Acts xvii. 26, 27. 

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is 
neither male nor female: for ye are ail one in Christ Jesus." — Gal. iii. 28. 



The unity of the human race is one of the themes of 
transcendent importance, not neglected yet never empha- 
sized according to its merit. We are one, absolutely one, 
with whatever varieties and differences there may be in 
structure and mentality. By physical likeness man ap- 
pears to be one; for every variation in feature, in com- 
plexion, is superficial, none is characteristic, while in funda- 
mental structure, attitude, organ, and function, men are 
one — one in brain, in nerve, in lung, in liver, in heart, in 
stomach, so that a physician in New York would be a 
physician the world over. The works, as in a clock or 
watch, might change cases, yet keep time. It is hardly 
conceivable that there should have sprung up in the infinite 
chances of evolution even two, still less many, creatures 
so alike in qualities and functions of reason, affection, moral 



*Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 27, 1S84. Lesson : Habakkuk 
iii. 2-19. Hymn : "America." 

Preached at the close of the Congressional and Presidential political 
campaign, in which, from considerations of the relative attitudes of the two 
parties towards the South and the civil service, and reasons connected with 
what he believed to be the relative fitness of the two presidential candi- 
dates for the duties of the position to be occupied, Mr. Beecher had heartily 
advocated the election of the Democratic candidate (Grover Cleveland, 
then Governor of the State of New York). And for the first time since the 
election of 1856, the Democratic party was placed in essential control of 
the Government. 



826 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

sense, imagination, and will, that they could perfectly har- 
monize, mutually understand, act together, mingle in mar- 
riage, comprehend in each other likenesses and differences, 
read the same drama, gloat over the same poetry, reason 
by like syllogisms, use the same arithmetic and geometry. 
African, Asiatic, European, American, at the seat of intel- 
ligence they are the same; with different expansions, with 
more or less variation of appetite, by the development of 
one or the other part; yet it is impossible to conceive of 
so vast a multitude as lie within the circuit of the races, as 
having come from different origins, when they are thus 
held together by a common relation of all social functions, 
all the sciences, all the literature and thought of the globe. 
Antiquity is modern when we read it. 

Finally, the test is that mankind are capable, by reason 
of their common origin and substantial likeness, of inter- 
affiliating and dwelling together — and in unity. That is 
the consummation of Christianity. Its aim, its business, 
is to teach men the sublime art of living together harmoni- 
ously. To do this in a schooling which will enable men to 
dwell together in this life is the mode of preparing them 
to dwell together in another life; for this world is prac- 
tice-ground. 

Harmony, then, is the end of the gospel. Through dis- 
cords, through wide-gaping intervals, at last the sym- 
phony of human life is to rise up into a grand choral 
unity. Of one blood, of one destiny, the human family 
lives in a sublime disseverance, nation after nation seeking 
themselves in order that they may seek their fellows. 

The progress toward a real union and harmony ought 
to be the highest, as it really is, of all our aspirations. 
The most transcendent interest is that which marks the 
progress of mankind from conflicting, fighting beasts to 
loving and harmoniously uniting men. 

Material prosperity is not without its interest in looking 
at this question. I am, to-day, to look at the whole ques- 
tion as it relates to America; excluding the other lands, not 
as worthless, but because there must be some metes and 
bounds. I do not disdain the moral and social relations 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 827 

of material prosperity; and yet we are perpetually warned 
and advertised by jjhilosophic friends from abroad, by 
pulpit preachers at home, that we are in danger of going 
toward animal conditions, and that the might of our soil, 
the might of our heavens, and the skill and industry of 
our people, are yielding such an abundance of bodily 
blessings as no nation ever knew in any age, and that we 
are in danger of being corrupted by it. All blessings carry 
danger, just as all substances carry shadows. True, we 
are in danger every day; but there is nothing that should 
especially awaken our fears at this period; and one of the 
themes of thanksgiving to-day is this, that in the provi- 
dence of God there have been raised up great counter- 
poising influences, which hold in check, and rather sanc- 
tify, the abundant physical blessings of our time. 

The family is not disintegrated; for, although here and 
there, as there always were, there are tendencies of evil 
and of mischief, yet, taking our land comprehensivel}^ the 
sanctity of the family, the moral foundations on which it 
must needs stand, its luminous happiness, were never more 
eminent, never so eminent, as to-day. 

Never was there a time when men brought into the 
household so much of art, of beauty, of rational enjoyment, 
of virtue, for the sake of happiness, as to-day. Once the 
most rigorous economy shut out art. To-day, almost 
without economy, so multitudinous are the resources of 
art for the great popular refinement of this land that the 
poor man's house shines, and articles of beauty are a part 
of his daily fare. He feeds his eyes, as well as his mouth. 

That there may be universal intelligence, the common- 
school system of America has spread, not alone shining in 
the midst of the older States. It is doubtful, in my judg- 
ment, whether in Connecticut, in Massachusetts, and in the 
whole New England tribe, there is as much (certainly 
there is not any more) enthusiasm for common -schools 
and popular education as there is in the Western States — 
in Indiana, in Illinois, in Missouri, yea, in Wyoming itself, 
and the provinces beyond, clear to the Pacific Ocean. 
The pride of the common people is in our common-schools. 



82 8 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

And this whole land is being provided with the light of 
that knowledge which belongs primarily to the common 
people. 

More than this. Academies were never so many nor so 
well endowed. Colleges and universities spring up in 
every direction. Some are yet in youth; some are ragged 
and in desolate regions; and some are in great strength 
and abounding prosperity, or thitherward tending; never- 
theless, the academy, the college, and the university are 
almost universally diffused throughout this land. The 
theological seminaries are multitudinous. Law schools 
are everywhere. Medical schools are abundant. All 
the institutions which first develop the mind itself, and 
then lead it along the lines of separate occupations, flourish 
without sign of decadence, with every sign of yet being in 
their youth, and reaching up to their maturity. 

Churches and missions have neither diminished in num- 
ber, nor grown lukewarm, nor in anywise lost their grasp, 
but in many ways are manifesting a vigorous manhood. 
The many methods of churches, these summer associa- 
tions, these universities of the forest and of the field, these 
Chautauquas, are on every side enlarging the range of 
social Christian life, of common kindness, of growing unity 
among denominations, and of larger wealth in Christian 
literature and learning. 

In connection with all these fundamental facts, I call you 
to take notice, with gratitude, of the fact that the wealth, 
the fullness, of the sea, of the forest, and of the field, is 
being, to a very large extent, moralized and Christianized. 
There are many properties that are yet to be managed, dis- 
cussed, and controlled; there are many ways in which 
wealth may threaten peace and liberty; but these are, 
comparatively speaking, few; whereas the general aspect 
of wealth, in our day, is that it is working towards refine- 
ment, virtue, and public service. 

Look how it is rearing, in every direction, more beautiful 
structures for home life. The hut for the savage; the 
hovel for the lowest forms of civilization; the home, as you 
go on upward; the mansion at last. On every line of travel, 



RETKOSrECT AND PROSPECT. 829 

in every State, and in every direction, you shall find that 
instead of the miserly hoarding of money, it is reappearing 
in structures of rare beauty, to enshrine within them the 
family. 

Not only are we spending largely in architecture, do- 
mestic; but we are planting our houses in gardens of 
Eden, — and mostly without any serpents in them. Land- 
scape gardening has become a living profession, and it is a 
glorious thing for a man to know how to frame a picture 
out of living trees and streams; how, with no colors, no 
palette, no small brush of the ever-stippling artist, to take 
God's great elements of beauty, and bring them together 
in such landscape-pictures, and plant down a house within 
so that one shall think, indeed, that he is living in the 
Garden of Eden. 

Galleries of pictures, museums, public and private col- 
lections, everywhere, are indicating the directions which 
wealth is taking. Parks are springing up in every direc- 
tion. Men are learning how to live better. Better food, 
better clothing, more enjoyments, and more wholesome 
ones — these are part and parcel of the growing public sen- 
timent; and it is to the hand of wealth that we are in- 
debted for these things. Wealth is not yet corrupted nor 
corrupting. 

When the New York and Brooklyn parks shall be joined 
together by a bridge over Blackwell's Island, not in the 
whole world shall there be such a driveway as there will 
then be in these two substantially connected cities, that lie 
like one vast metropolis with a stream passing in the midst. 

The noble sums given by men of great riches are not 
unworthy of our thought. The donations to Harvard, to 
Amherst, to Dartmouth, and to Yale; the princely gifts 
that are crowning Princeton; the million that Vanderbilt 
gave to Nashville University; the half million, given re- 
cently by his son to royally endow the medical schools of 
New York; the large gifts of our own townsman, Mr. 
Seney, whose name I speak with reverence and affection, — 
these, and such as these, are our reply to those ravens who 
croak over the danger of luxury and riches. 



830 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

All these are a set-off and answer to those who fear that 
America will be ruined by mere material riches. In all these 
things our land is doing not occasional good deeds; it is 
in the atmosphere. It runs with the public sentiment. It 
tends to increase. It portends a future vastly greater and 
more glorious than the present — a future such as never was 
developed in any other age or nation. 

Alas, that there should be a single seeming exception ! 
When the generous and sentimental gift of the French 
people to America, the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the 
World, shall arrive, it is likely to find no place to stand on. 
If it cannot stand upon a noble pedestal, casting its light 
afar off, the last light to the tearful eyes of those leaving 
home, the home flame to greet pilgrims returning, the morn- 
ing star to immigrants, though shining in the West, — then 
this great gift of a generous people had better be turned 
end for end, so that it stand upon its head, that the torch 
may be quenched. Has the golden shower rained every- 
where but upon this luminous gift of the great republic 
across the sea? What a monument for some man to 
associate his name with ! As it is, it seems likely to be a 
monument of the stinginess of the common people.* 

After these general views, let us specialize a little as to 
the condition of our people. Since it is included in our 
common-schools and in our family conditions, I will not 
ask your thought about the pains taken to rear children; 
but I would say. Look, for instance, at the efforts that are 
making already to gather together Nobody's children, — the 
waifs, the homeless, the beggars. Look at that church of 
the children, the Children's Aid Society, both of New York 
and Brooklyn, as well as of sister cities, that sweep the 
streets and gather up the waste, as in great manufacturing 
establishments the dust of the gold is caught upon floors, 
swept up, prepared, cleaned, and smelted again. Thus they 
are gathering up the very refuse of the streets in which is 
the unspeakably precious gold of human life, and are car- 
ing: for it. 



*The money for the pedestal was duly raised, the pedestal and statue 
reared, and the whole inaugurated in the autumn of 1SS6. 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 831 

We are attempting to combat with some success, though 
slowly, the general repugnance to foreigners. I remem- 
ber when the Irish were obnoxious to our prejudices, and 
subject to our contempt. I have lived to see the day when 
they are universally regarded as citizens most excellent 
and desirable, partly because they can vote, but more be- 
cause great numbers of them have developed into moral 
and civic worth. To-day there are men who scorn the 
Chinese, some because they are competitors in the labor 
market, some because to do it will win them votes, and 
some because of the old bestiality of human nature that 
allies it to the animal kingdom, and causes the newcomer 
to feel the horns of the old residents of the barnyard. For 
all these reasons what a howl and an outcry there has been 
about the immigration of Chinamen ! Stop your noise, or 
stop your missions. If, when Chinamen are brought into 
America, amid her churches, her schools, and all her relig- 
ious establishments, they are not tolerated, but are followed 
down the streets with violence, and mobbed, do not send 
such Christianity to the Chinese empire. I do not wonder 
that Chinamen refuse the Christian religion. They have 
got a better; that is to say, a better than that part of the 
Christian religion that enlightens them. I will not say 
these things, however, for in San Francisco, in Denver, and 
in every city between the Pacific and the Atlantic, faithful 
men and women have gathered up these poor creatures 
from our midst, and in schools by night and with churches 
and classes, are bringing them to a nobler reception and a 
better life. I mark this as one of the points of wholesome- 
ness and growth towards a true idea of liberty in the 
minds of the people. If these foreigners would but leave 
their own garments at home and put on our sort, they 
would find their way a great deal easier. The Japanese do 
this, and they are welcome everywhere, in all society for 
which they are fitted. They wear our clothes, they accept 
our civilization and manners, and we accept them, as well 
for these as for higher reasons of their intrinsic worth; for 
no better population could be brought into these United 
States than the educated Japanese. Indeed, they are prac- 



832 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

tically brought in now. They are teachers in our schools; 
for, as Oriental art has almost wholly changed our Occi- 
dental art, adding, at any rate, large elements of beauty to 
it, so Oriental artists are becoming teachers in our schools 
to show us how to design, to draw, and to color as they do. 
The Indians, also, upon this continent, have not been 
neglected. We have been a long time in learning what to 
do with them. We have never tried letting them alone, 
much. We have tried shooting them, imprisoning them, 
hanging them, cheating them, and all such ways. The 
gospel method of civilization we have never made much 
of. But now, at last, we are indebted to the Army of the 
United States, and the generals of it. The educated 
officers of our armies have been our peace-messengers for a 
hundred years. Never have they incited one intrigue, never 
one political organization, never one single element that 
tended toward war or the supremacy of the armed hand 
everywhere. Always, the educated officers of the American 
Army have been humane men; men of peace, studying 
civilization. And since they have had so largely to do with 
the Indians, and since the polity of educating them was 
adopted — not alone of educating their children in Eastern 
schools, but of bringing them together and teaching them 
the civilized arts — there has been an amelioration steadily 
going on; and when once we shall take a single step in 
advance, and give to the Indians, in severalty, farms that 
they may own just as white men own theirs, and are thus 
put into the school of agriculture, we shall have touched 
at last that foundation on which civilization must always 
be built. You cannot civilize a hunting and fishing popula- 
tion; you cannot civilize a pastoral people, wandering about 
hither and thither. The rolling stone gathers no moss. You 
cannot treat with a barbaric people in any way until you 
first bring them on to the basis of agriculture. From that 
will spring up manufactures, and from them commercial 
interests; and then you will have full-fledged civilization. 
Upon that basis you may build institutions of learning, 
refinement, and religion. This is the tendency to-day. I 
hail it as one of the auspicious signs of that growing wis- 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 833 

dom which God is sending to us in the treatment of human 
nature. 

Even the outcast Mormons are not neglected. Heroic 
women there are who have dedicated themselves to the 
cause of Mormon education and made themselves knights 
errant, nobler, purer, and sublimer than any that figure in 
mediaeval history; and in their faith that intelligence and 
religion are adequate to every need of the human race, 
they have gone down into Mormon territories and are 
kindling love for common-schools, and are preaching the 
pure gospel — and that not without effect. 

It is with all such efforts as it is with the grain. The 
seed cannot live until it has died. It hides itself until it 
sprouts, and then it runs through its several stages to ma- 
turity. The efforts that are being made in that direction 
may not yet be producing fruit as we expected, but they 
are germinating, they are growing. Something may be 
done by Government, but this is the fundamental cure for 
all such errors and evils as Mormonism. If this subject 
can once be kept aloof from politics, it may be, as it were, 
helped by the auxiliary influence of legislation, by the 
power of knowledge and of religion, and the evil will be 
abated and stayed; but if it be made a foot-ball between 
two great parties, it will be like a very sick man with a 
room full of quarreling doctors. The man will die, and 
the quarrelers will divide all that is left. That was the 
power of Slavery — a political power. That gave it vital- 
ity. When its political power was destroyed, it went soon 
after. It will be a crowning reputation to any adminis- 
tration to abate this nuisance; and it will be another tes- 
timony to the self-redeeming power of a free people from 
dangerous internal maladies. Under absolute monarchies 
remedies spring from without, and are enfixed and en- 
forced upon the people. In an enlightened republican de- 
mocracy, the cure begins within and works outward. 

Finally, the cycle of history in the great modern drama 
of American life has well-nigh completed itself. First we 
had slavery, then disruption, then wars; and now we have 
peace. That has taken place without which perfect recon- 



834 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ciliation could not have been produced, and without which 
it could never have existed between the North and the 
South. The statesmen of sixteen former slave States are 
to be admitted to a participation in the administration of 
the national government; and I thank God.* It is the last 
step. We have need of them. It is for our good as much 
as for their own that they have come. The temper of the 
South befits this final reconciliation. It was the glory of 
our nation that there was a conscience against the dynasty 
of slavery. We should have been worthy thrice over of 
stripes and chains had we not resented and resisted it. 
Yet the whole North, as I am witness, was opposed to any 
interference with slavery. It must not be spoken of in 
the prayer-meeting, it must not be touched on in the pul- 
pit. It would disturb trade, it would destroy industry, 
peace, and quiet. We heard that on every side; but there 
was a swelling up underneath, and God's spirit was the 
reason why conscience would not abide in peace while so 
mighty a system of injustice existed, and was striking its 
bad influences through all the members of this great com- 
monwealth. When courage was given to men to speak 
and make themselves heard, God sent great delusions 
upon the minions of slavery. Terrific was the blunder 
that they made; and then God gave courage to men 
to confront the dragon, fiery-mouthed and threatening. 
When the price of patriotism was war, from every hill, 
and from every vale, and throughout the whole North, 
the cry was: " Let it be war; but it shall be Justice and 
Union ! " 

I thank God that he gave wisdom and courage to men 
to meet that greatest exigency of our times. It was well 
met, and successfully met. Then wisdom was given to 



* At the November elections of 1884 the Democratic party carried a 
large number of the Congressional contests, and from the South chiefly 
Southern -born representatives were sent to Congress. At the same time 
Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate, having been elected Presi- 
dent, the South generally hailed that as an indication of a relaxing of the 
war-grudges at the North, and the reopening of broader possibilities for 
Southern men in the common commercial and political life of the nation. 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 835 

US, too, when the war was past and on us was rolled the 
duty, most difficult, along the road of darkness, without 
experiment or any precedent, to reconstruct the shattered 
fragments of the sixteen disinherited States. 

That mistakes were made, cannot be doubted; or that 
sometimes the pressure was too strong, sometimes too 
light, or that things which experience has rejected were 
at the time supposed to be vital. But the work was in- 
herently difficult; and I think that though those to whose 
hands it was committed were not free from mistakes, yet 
they have builded well; and their names are part and 
parcel of American history. God gave us patience, not 
only to redeem the slave from bondage, but, after the shat- 
tering of all Southern influences and institutions, and the 
destruction of their wealth, — the actual subversion of so- 
ciety, so that the white masters were at the bottom, and 
the colored slaves were at the top, — to wait. There were 
great difficulties; human nature would liot be what human 
nature is if there had not been. There were many impru- 
dent things done. North and South. Nevertheless, we have 
waited patiently and courageously until time should help; 
for Time is God's minister of mercy. 

Then we have had patience given us, too, to redeem, on 
our side, the swollen values of the distempering war. We 
have had grace and conscience given us to redeem our 
finances and to bring back honestly within their bounds 
the issues of currency, and have settled business on nor- 
mal and solid foundations. We have had patient men 
who knew how to take the thread and draw it out of the 
snarl of our financial affairs, until now it is wound upon 
the spool, safe and usable. 

But one thing more was needed, and that was to chase 
the scowl from the Southern brow; to revive the old 
friendship; to clasp hands again in a vow of loving and 
patriotic zeal. It was given to us last, because it is the 
greatest of God's gifts. There never has been such a 
scene since the earth was born; there never has been such 
a rupture, never such a conflict, never such a victory, never 
such a reconstruction, never such restoration of integrity 



836 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

in business, never such a reconciliation and gladness be- 
tween good men on both sides as come to us to-day. As 
yet the eyes of many are holden, and they cannot see how 
great a blessing God has brought to our unbelieving eyes 
and timid hands. From the bottom of my soul, I believe 
in the honor and integrity of thoughtful Southern men; 
and when I get from them such letters as I do, and hear 
from their lips such declarations as I hear, that they feel 
at last that they are in and of the Union, as much as we, 
and point to the flag, declaring, with tears, " That is now 
my flag," I believe it; I should be faithless to God and to 
providence if I did not. I believe it with an enthusiasm 
of faith, and with a longing heart of love; for I think 
they are above hypocrisy or insincerity; and that if we 
choose, the last cloud will rise from between us and then 
pass away forever. 

Moses, after forty years of toil, was allowed to see the 
promised land from afar off only. Less worthy, yet more 
blessed, I am spared to go over with the rejoicing tribes 
into the land flowing with milk and honey. What am I, 
or my father's house, that to me should be given the priv- 
ilege of laboring in all this drama, and seeing it end nobly 
thus ! The discipline is complete, and to the end of time 
this great epic of liberty, our struggle with slavery, will 
shine like the sun. 

Not the least joyful element in this reconciliation is the 
assured safety and benefit which will accrue to the colored 
race. That has come to pass which was their only safety. 
Just as soon as the Southern statesmen accept the perfect 
restoration of themselves to the great body politic, and 
find that there is no division as between Northern men 
and Southern men in any of the honors of government; 
just as soon as they are in, and a part of every adminis- 
tration, as, thank God, they will be; just so soon of neces- 
sity that will take place which has taken place everywhere, 
in every community; there will be the party of adminis- 
tration, the "ins," and the party opposed to them, the op- 
position, the "outs." The moment you have these two 
parties, each party has a sentinel watching it. In the 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 837 

South that will take place which is the salvation of the 
colored race. As long as they were a fringe upon a 
Northern party, the South was condensed and solidified 
against it. As soon as they are divided at home between 
the administrational party and the opposition party, they 
will be guarded and taken care of. The administration 
party will not allow its voters to be injured; the opposi- 
tion party will not allow its voters to be injured. They 
will be distributed as they should be, and the strength of 
each party in the South will be the safeguard of the in- 
termediate voters. I regard this now, with schools and 
academies and various seminaries spread among them, as 
the final step of emancipation. 

It is in these views, which have not been accepted with 
sympathy by some of the dearest friends I have, that I 
have acted;* and in the calmest retrospect I now rejoice 
that I was able to act so. 

The greatest mistake of my life has happened twice, as 
I have been informed. I propose this morning now to 
read a portion of the letters that were the first " greatest 
mistake of my life." That was immediately after the war, 
in the autumn of 1866, while the question of reconciliation 
was still pending, and is in the now somewhat famous 
"Cleveland letter" — not Governor Cleveland, but the city 
of Cleveland. Twice I have stumbled on Cleveland ! 

I was in 1866 invited to act as Chaplain to the Conven- 
tion of the Soldiers and Sailors of our Army and Navy, 
called at the city of Cleveland, Ohio. The object of that 
convention was to so shape our Northern politics as to 
bring the Southern States back immediately, or as soon as 
possible; and in that general tendency I sympathized: and 
this is the letter, or part of it only, which I shall read, and 
which expressed my ideas at that time. 

I read it now that you may see how straight a line has 
run, from the very days of the war down to this hour, in 
my thought, philosophy, and action. 



* Referring to the part he had taken in the political campaign of i5 
just closed. 



iiT;8 PATRIOTIC ADDRI.SSES. 

[Mr. Beecher here read the passages from the " Letter to the 
Convention," which are enclosed in brackets, to be found on 
pages 739-741 ■] 

My own friends were very hot. Some dove into news- 
papers; some into letters, which flew thick and fast all 
around about me. Neighboring ministers thought that I 
was unseated and disrupted forever. In the midst of it all 
I knew I was right, and that if I had patience others would 
find that I was right. And they did; though they still 
talk about that greatest blunder of my life, " the Cleveland 
Letter." I am going to send down that document to my 
children as one of the most glorious things that I ever did 
in my life. But such was the excitement and clamor that 
I thought it wise to alleviate the fear and trouble of my 
people; and so I wrote to a private friend, then, a letter to 
be read to the church, giving a fuller view of the grotind of 
my first letter; maintaining the same position, but with 
explanatory reasoning. I will extract a few words from 
that. 

[Mr. Beecher here read from the " Letter to a Parishioner" the 
bracketed portion on pages 742-743. "Then," he said, " I had in 
the letter a long discourse about President Johnson, whom I 
tried, very hard, to hold in the harness, but who kicked out. 
This portion of it is not relevant to the present issue, and I will 
not read it. The letter then proceeds:" and he read the final 
bracketed portions, on pages 748-749.] 

My dear friends, if I had written that for to-day I could 
not have written it better, and I do not think it needs to be 
written any better. I stand on that, and I have read it 
this morning not only because inspired by the parallelism, 
but because it has been represented that my Cleveland let- 
ter was the greatest blunder of the day; and then, worse 
than that, that I backed down from it and retracted it. 
And I have read both letters, in parts, so far as bears more 
immediately on questions of to-day, that you may know that 
God gave me the light to do one of the best things I ever did 
when I wrote that letter; and that he gave me the grace 
to stand on it without turning back for one single moment; 
and that he has given me grace to lay my path, by sight, 



KETROSPECT AXD PROSPECT. 839 

along those two letters — hindsight and foresight — from 
that day down to this; and that he has given me grace to 
withstand the impleadings of those that I love dearly, not 
only of my immediate household, but of my blood and 
kindred; of those that are in the church, that are to me as 
my own life, and those that are of the political party with 
which I have labored thus far. 

Still seeing that luminous light, as God reveals it to me, 
I have walked in it and toward it; and abide in that same 
direction to-day; and, God helping me, so will I live to the 
end. 



EULOGY ON GENERAL GRANT.* 



Another name is added to the roll of those whom the 
world will not willingly let die. A few years since storm- 
clouds filled his heaven, and obloquy, slander, and bitter 
lies rained down upon him. 

The clouds are all blown away; under a serene sky he 
laid down his life; and the Nation wept. The path to his 
tomb is worn by the feet of innumerable pilgrims. The 
mildewed lips of Slander are silent, and even Criticism 
hesitates lest some incautious word should mar the history 
of the modest, gentle, magnanimous Warrior. 

The whole Nation watched his passage through humili- 
ating misfortunes with unfeigned sympathy; the whole 
world sighed when his life ended. At his burial the un- 
sworded hands of those whom he had fought lifted his 
bier and bore him to his tomb with love and reverence. 

Grant made no claim to saintship. He was a man of 
like passions, and with as marked limitations as other 
men. Nothing could be more distasteful to his honest, 
modest soul while living, and nothing more unbecoming 
to his memory, than lying exaggerations and fulsome flat- 
teries. 

Men without faults are apt to be men without force. A 
round diamond has no brilliancy. Lights and shadows, 
hills and valleys, give beauty to the landscape. The faults 
of great and generous natures are often overripe good- 
ness, or the shadows which their virtues cast. 

Three elements enter into the career of a great citizen: 

That which his ancestry gives; 

That which opportunity gives; 

That which his will develops. 

Grant came from a sturdy New England stock; New 

*Delivered at Tremont Temple, Boston, Oct, 22, 1885. 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 84 1 

England derived it from Scotland; Scotland bred it, at a 
time when Covenanters and Puritans w^ere made— men of 
iron consciences hammered out upon the anvil of adversity. 
From New England the stream flowed to the Ohio, where it 
enriched the soil till it brought forth abundant harvests of 
great men. When it was Grant's time to be born, he came 
forth without celestial portents, and his youth had in it no 
prophecy of his manhood. His boyhood was wholesome, 
robust, with a vigorous frame. With a heart susceptible 
of tender love, he yet was not social. He was patient and 
persistent. He loved horses, and could master them; 
that is a good sign. 

Grant had no art of creating circumstances; opportunity 
must seek him, or else he would plod through life without 
disclosing the gifts which God hid in him. The gold in the 
hills cannot disclose itself. It must be sought and dug. 
/ A sharp and wiry politician, for some reason of Provi- 
dence, performed a generous deed in sending young Grant 
to West Point. He finished his course there, distinguished 
as a skillful and bold rider, with an inclination to mathe- 
matics, with but little taste for the theory and literature 
of war, but with sympathy for its external and material 
developments. In boyhood and youth he was marked by 
simplicity, candor, veracity, and silence. 

After leaving the academy he saw military service in 
Mexico, and afterward in California, but without conspic- 
uous results. 

Then came a clouded period, a sad life of irresolute vi- 
bration between self-indulgence and aspiration, through 
intemperance. He resigned from the army, and at that 
time one would have feared that his life would end in 
eclipse. Hercules crushed two serpents sent to destroy 
him in his cradle. It was later in his life that Grant de- 
stroyed the enemy that " biteth like a serpent and stingeth 
like an adder." 

At length he struck at the root of the matter. Others 
agree not to drink, which is good; Grant overcame the 
wish to drink — which is better. But the cloud hung over 
his reputation for many years, and threatened his ascend- 



842 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

ency when better days came. Of all his victories, many 
and great, this was the greatest, that he conquered him- 
self. His will was stronger than his passions. ^ 

Poor, much shattered, he essayed farming. Carrying 
wood for sale to St. Louis did not seem to be that for 
which he was created; neither did planting crops, or rais- 
ing cattle. 

Tanning is an honorable calling, and to many, a road to 
wealth. Grant tried that, but found no gold in the tan vat. 

Then he became a listless merchant — a silent, unsocial, 
and rather moody waiter upon petty traffic. 

He was a good subaltern, a poor farmer, a worse tanner, 
a worthless trafficker. Without civil experience, without 
literary gifts, too diffident to be ambitious, too modest to 
put himself forward, too honest to be a politician, he was 
of all men the least likely to attain eminence, and abso- 
lutely unfitted, apparently, for pre-eminence; yet God's 
providence selected him. 

When the prophet Samuel went forth to anoint a suc- 
cessor to the impetuous and imperious King Saul, he caused 
all the children of Jesse to pass before him. He rejected 
one by one the whole band. At length the youngest, called 
from among the flock, came in, and the Lord said to Samuel, 
" Arise, this is he,'' and Samuel took the horn of oil and 
anointed him in the midst of his brethren, and the spirit of 
the Lord came upon him from that day forward, (i Sam. 
xvi.) 

Ordained was Grant with the ointment of war — black 
and sulphurous. 

Had Grant died at the tan-yard, or from behind the 
counter, the world would never have suspected that it had 
lost a hero. He would have fallen as an undistinguishable 
leaf among the millions cast down every year. His time 
had not come. It was plain that he had no capacity to 
create his opportunity. // must find him out, or he would 
die ignoble and unknown ! 

It was coming ! Already the clouds afar off were gather- 
ing. He saw them not. No figures were seen upon the 
dim horizon of the already near future. 



EULOGY ON GKAXT. 843 

The insulted flag; the garments rolled in blood; a mill- 
ion men in arms; the sulphurous smoke of battle; gory 
heaps upon desperate battle-fields; an army of slowly mov- 
ing crippled heroes; grave-yards populous as cities; they 
were all in the clouded horizon, though he saw them not ! 

Let us look upon the scene on which he was soon to 
exert a mighty energy. 

This continent lay waiting for ages for the seed of civil- 
ization. At length a sower came forth to sow. While he 
sowed the good seed of liberty and Christian civilization, 
an enemy, darkling, sowed tares. They sprang up and 
grew together. The Constitution cradled both Slavery and 
Liberty. While yet ungrown they dwelt together in peace. 
They snarled in youth, quarreled when half grown, and 
fought when of full age. The final catastrophe was inevita- 
ble. No finesse, no device or compromise could withstand 
the inevitable. The conflict began in Congress; it drifted 
into commerce; it rose into the very air, and public senti- 
ment grew hot, and raged in the pulpit, the forum, and in 
politics. 

The South, like a queenly beauty, grew imperious and 
exacting; the North, like an obsequious suitor, knelt at her 
feet only to receive contempt and mockery. 

Both parties, Whig and Democrat, drank of the cup of 
her sorcery. It killed the Whig party. The Democrat was 
tougher, and was only besotted. A few, like John the Bap- 
tist, were preaching repentance, but, like him, they were 
in the wilderness, and seemed rude and shaggy fanatics. 

If a wise moderation had possessed the South, if they 
had conciliated the North, if they had met the just scruples 
of honest men, who, hating slavery, dreaded the dishonor 
of breaking the compacts of the Constitution, the South 
might have held control for another hundred years. It 
was not to be. God sent a strong delusion upon them. 

Nothing can be plainer than that all parties in the State 
were drifting in the dark, without any comprehension of 
the elemental causes at work. Without prescience or sa- 
gacity, like ignorant physicians, they prescribed at random; 
they sewed on patches, new compromise upon old garments; 



cS44 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

sought to conceal the real depth and danger of the gather- 
ing torrent by crying, Peace, Peace, to each other. In short, 
they were seeking to medicate volcanoes and stop earth- 
quakes by administering political quinine. The wise states- 
men were bewildered and politicians were juggling fools. 

The South had laid the foundation of her industry, her 
commerce, and her commonwealth upon slavery. It was 
slavery that inspired her councils, that engorged her phi- 
lanthropy, that corrupted her political economy and the- 
ology, that disturbed all the ways of active politics; broke 
up sympathy between North and South. As Ahab met 
Elijah with, "Art thou he that troubleth Israel ? " so slavery 
charged the sentiments of freedom with vexatious med- 
dling and unwarrantable interference. 

The South had builded herself upon the rock of Slavery. 
It lay in the very channels of civilization, like some flood 
rock lying sullen off Hell Gate. The tides of controversy 
rushed upon it and split into eddies and swirling pools, 
bringing incessant disaster. The rock would not move. 
It must be removed. It was the South itself that fur- 
nished the engineers. Arrogance in council sunk the 
shaft, violence chambered the subterranean passages, and 
infatuation loaded them with infernal dynamite. All was 
secure. Their rock was their fortress. The hand that 
fired upon Sumter exploded the mine, and tore the for- 
tress to atoms. For one moment it rose into the air like 
spectral hills — for one moment the waters rocked with 
wild confusion, then settled back to quiet, and the way of 
civilization was opened ! 

The spark that was kindled at Fort Sumter fell upon 
the North like fire upon autumnal prairies. Men came 
together in the presence of this universal calamity with 
sudden fusion. They forgot all separations of politics, 
parties, or even of religion itself. It was a conflagra- 
tion of patriotism. The bugle and the drum rang out in 
every neighborhood, the plow stood still in the furrow, 
the hammer dropped from the anvil, book and pen were 
forgotten, pulpit and forum, court and shop, felt the 
electric shock. Parties dissolved and reformed. The 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 845 

Democratic party sent forth a host of noble men, and 
swelled the Republican ranks, and gave many noble 
leaders and irresistible energy to the hosts of war. The 
whole land became a military school, and officers and men 
began to learn the art and practice of war. 

When once the North had organized its armies, there 
was soon disclosed an amiable folly of conciliation. It 
hoped for some peaceable way out of the war; generals 
seemed to fight so that no one should be hurt; they saw 
the mirage of future parties above the battle-field, and 
anxiously considered the political effect of their military 
conduct. They were fighting not to break down rebell- 
ion, but to secure a future presidency — or governorship. 
The South had smelted into a glowing mass. It believed 
in its course with an infatuation that would have been 
glorious if the cause had been better ! It put its whole 
soul into the struggle, and struck hard ! 

The South fought for slavery and independence. The 
North fought for Union, but for political success after the 
war. Thus for two years, not unmarked by great deeds, 
the war lingered. Lincoln, sad and sorrowful, felt the 
moderation of his generals, and longed for a man of iron 
mould, who had but two words in his military vocabulary. 
Victory or Annihilation. 

He was coming ! He was heard from at Henry and 
Donelson. 

Three great names were rising to sight — Sherman, 
Thomas, Sheridan; and larger than either. Grant ! With 
his advent the armies, with some repulses, went steadily 
forward, from conquering to conquer. Aside from all 
military qualities, he had one absorbing spirit — the Union 
must be saved, the rebellion must be beaten, the Confed- 
erate armies must be threshed to chaff as on a summer 
threshing floor. He had no political ambition, no imag- 
inary reputation to preserve or gain. A great genius for 
grand strategy, a comprehension of complex and vast 
armies, caution, prudence and silence while preparing, an 
endless patience, an indomitable will, and a real, down- 
right fighting quality. 



846 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Thus at length Grant was really born ! He had lain in 
the nest for long as an infertile egg. The brooding of 
war hatched the ^^%, and an eagle came forth ! 



It is impossible to reach the full measure of Grant's 
military genius until we survey the greatness of this most 
extraordinary war of modern days, or it may be said of 
any age. 

For more than four years there were more than a mill- 
ion men on each side, stretched out upon a line of be- 
tween one and two thousand miles, and a blockade rigor- 
ously enforced along a coast of an equal extent. During 
that time, counting no battle in which there were not five 
hundred Union men engaged, there were fought more than 
two thousand engagements — two thousand two hundred 
and sixty-one of record. 

Amid this sea of blood, there shot up great battles, that 
for numbers, fighting, and losses, will rank with the great 
battles of the world. 

In 1862 the losses by death, wounds, and missing, on 
each side, as extracted from Government Records, were: — 

UNION. CONFED. TOTAL. 

1. Shiloh 13.500 10,699 24,199 

2. Seven Pines and Fair Oaks, . . 5,739 7.997 13.736 

3. 7 Day Retreat and Malvern Hill, . 15,249 17.583 32,832 

4. 2d Bull Run 7,800 3,700 11,100 

5. Antietam, 12,469 25,899 38,367 

6. Fredericksburg 12,353 4-576 16,929 

7. Stone River, 11,578 25,560 37,138 

1863. 

8. Chancellorsville 16,030 12,281 28,311 

9. Gettysburg, 23,186 31,621 54,807 

10. Chickamauga 15.851 17,804 33,655 

11. Chattanooga, 5,616 8,684 

1864. 

12. Wilderness 37.737 11,400 49.137 

13. Spottsylvania, . ". 26,421 9,000 35.421 

14. Cold Harbor 14.931 1.700 16,700 

15. Petersburg 10,586 28,000 38,586 

16. Chattanooga to Atlanta 37,i99 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 847 

Over 26,000 Northern soldiers died in prison, in cap- 
tivity. If we reckon all who perished by violence and by 
sickness on both sides, nearly a million died in the War of 
Emancipation. 

The number must be largely swelled if we add all who 
died at home, of sickness and wounds received in the cam- 
paign. 

The Secretary of War, in his report, dated November 
22, 1865, makes the following remarks, which show rnore 
than anything else the spirit animating the people of the 
loyal States: "On several occasions, when troops were 
promptly needed to avert impending disaster, vigorous 
exertion brought them into the field from remote States 
with incredible speed. Official reports show that after 
the disasters on the Peninsula, in 1862, over eighty thou- 
sand troops were enlisted, organized, armed, equipped, 
and sent into the field in less than a month. Sixty thou- 
sand troops have repeatedly gone to the field within four 
v^^eeks. Ninety thousand infantry were sent to the armies 
from the five States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and 
Wisconsin, within twenty days. When Lee's army sur- 
rendered, thousand of recruits were pouring in, and men 
were discharged from recruiting stations and rendezvous 
in every State." 

Into this sulphurous storm of war Grant entered almost 
unknown. It was with difficulty that he could obtain a 
command. Once set forward, Doueison, Shiloh, Vicksburg, 
Chickamai/ga, The Wilderness^ Spotisylvania, Petersburg, Ap- 
pomattox, these were his footsteps. In four years he had 
risen, without political favor, from the bottom to the very 
highest command — not second to any living commander 
in all the world ! 

His plans were large, his undiscouraged will was patient 
to obduracy. He was not fighting for reputation, nor for 
the display of generalship, nor for a future Presidency. 
He had but one motive, and that as intense as life itself — 
the subjugation of the rebellion and the restoration of 
the broken Union. He embodied the feelings of the com- 
mon people. He was their perfect representative. The 



848 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

war was waged for the maintenance of the Union, the 
suppression of armed resistance, and, at length, for the 
eradication of slavery. Every step, from Donelson to Ap- 
pomattox, evinced with increasing intensity this his one 
terrible purpose. He never wavered, turned aside, or dal- 
lied. He waded through blood to the horses' bridles. 

In all this career he never lost courage or equanimity. 
With a million men, for whose movements he was respon- 
sible, he yet carried a tranquil mind, neither depressed by 
disasters, nor elated by success. Gentle of heart, famil- 
iar with all, never boasting, always modest — Grant came 
of the old self-contained stock, men of a simple force of 
being, which allied his genius to the great elemental forces 
of Nature, silent, invisible, irresistible. When his work 
was done, and the defeat of the Confederate armies was 
final, this dreadful man of blood was as tender toward his 
late adversaries as a woman toward her son. He imposed 
no humiliating conditions, spared the feelings of his an- 
tagonists, sent home the disbanded Southern men with 
food and with horses for working their crops, and when a 
revengeful spirit in the Executive Chair showed itself, and 
threatened the chief Southern generals. Grant, with a 
holy indignation, interposed himself, and compelled his 
superior to relinquish his rash purpose. 

There have been men — there are yet — for stupidity is 
long-lived — who regard Grant as only a man of luck. 
Surely he was ! Is it not luck through such an ancestry 
to have had conferred upon him such a body, such a dispo- 
sition, such greatness of soul, such patriotism unalloyed by 
ambition, such military genius, such an indomitable will, and 
such a capacity for handling the largest armies of any age? 

For four years and more this man of continuous luck, 
across a rugged continent, in the face of armies of men 
as brave as his own, commanded by generals of extraor- 
dinary ability, performed every function of strategy in 
grand war, which Jomini attributes to Napoleon and his 
greatest marshals, and Napier to Wellington. Whether 
Grant could have conducted a successful retreat will 
never be known. He was never defeated. 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 849 

Grant has been severely criticised for the waste of life. 
War is not created for the purpose of saving life, but by 
a noble spending of blood to save the Commonwealth. 
The great end which he achieved would have been cheaply 
gained, at double the expense. 

After the Battle of the Wilderness he was styled the 
Butcher. 

But we are not to forget the circumstances under which 
the conduct of the last great campaign was committed to 
him. For four years the heroic and patient Army of the 
Potomac had squandered blood and treasure without 
measure, and had gained not a step. With generals 
many, excellently skilled in logistics, skillful in every- 
thing but success, they fought — and retreated; they dug, 
they waded, they advanced — and retreated. They went 
down to Richmond and looked upon it — and came back to 
defend Washington. 

Their victories were fruitless. Antietam was ably 
fought, but weakly followed up. Gettysburg, with hide- 
ous slaughter, sent Lee back unpursued, undestroyed, 
though he waited three or four days, helpless, cooped-up, 
and surely doomed had Sheridan or Grant been in Meade's 
place. 

The Army of the Potomac needed a general who knew 
how to employ their splendid bravery, their all-enduring 
pluck. They had danced long enough; they had led ofif 
— changed partners — chassed — they had gone into cam- 
paigns with slow and solemn music, but returned with 
quicksteps. They seemed desirous of making war so as 
not to exasperate the South. 

Do not men know that nothing spends life faster than 
unfighting war? Disease is more deadly than the bullet. 
In all the war, but one out of every forty-two that died 
was slain by the bullet, and one out of every thirteen by 
disease. Six million men passed through the hospitals 
during the war; over three million with malarial diseases. 

It seemed doubtful whether the Government was put- 
ting down rebellion, or whether Lee was putting down 
the Government. An eminent critic says: "The fire and 



850 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

passion, downright earnestness and self-abandon that the 
South threw into the struggle at the outset and main- 
tained for two full years, had, it must be admitted, so 
far impaired the morale of the Union forces, that while 
courage was nowhere wanting, self-confidence had been 
seriously diminished. This was especially true of the de- 
voted and decimated Army of the Potomac, whose com- 
manders, after the first battle of Bull Run, always ap- 
peared to be afraid of exasperating the enemy. Driving 
Lee to extremities was the one thing that they were all 
loath to do. They would fight to the last drop of blood 
to defend Washington, to hold their own, to preserve the 
Union, but to corner the enemy, to drive him to despera- 
tion, to make him shed the last drop of his own blood, 
was the one thing they would not do, and no amount of 
urging could make them do it. It was this arriere pensee 
that held the hand of McClellan and of Meade after An- 
tietam and Gettysburg. Both of these engagements were 
victories for the Army of the Potomac, and both were 
robbed of their fruits by a lurking fear of the lion at bay. 
'They are shooing the enemy out of Maryland,' said Lin- 
coln, with his peculiar aptness and homeliness." 

When Grant came to the Army of the Potomac, he re- 
versed the methods of all who preceded him. Braver sol- 
diers never were, and valiant commanders; but the gen- 
erals had not learned the art of fighting with deadly in- 
tent. Peace is very good for peace, but war is organized 
rage. It means destruction or it means nothing. 

At the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant stripped his com- 
missary train of its guards to fill a gap in the line of bat- 
tle. When expostulated with for exposing his army to the 
loss of all its provisions, his reply was: — 

" When this army is whipped, it will not want any provisions." 

All summer, all the autumn, all the winter, all the spring, 
and early summer again, he hammered Lee, with blow on 
blow, until, at Appomattox, the great, but not greatest, 
Southern general went to the ground. 

Grant was a great fighter; but not a fighter only. 

His mind took in the whole field of war — as wide and 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 851 

complex as any that ever Napoleon knew. He combined 
in his plans the operations of three armies, and for the 
first time in the war, the whole of the Union forces were 
acting in concert. 

He had the patience of Fate, and the force of Thor. If 
he neglected the rules of war, as at Vicksburg, it was to 
make better rules, to those who were strong enough to 
employ them. 

Counselors gave him materials. He formed his own 
plans. Abhorring show, simple in manner, gentle in his 
intercourse, modest and even diffident in regard to his own 
personality, he seems to have been the only man in camp 
who was ignorant of his own greatness. Never was a 
commander better served, never were subordinates more 
magnanimously treated. The fame of his generals was as 
dear to him as his own. Those who might have been ex- 
pected to be his rivals, were his bosom friends. While 
there were envies and jealousies among minor officers, the 
great names, Thomas, Sherman, Sheridan, give to history 
a new instance of a great friendship between great war- 
riors. 

Some future day a Napier will picture the final drama: 
the breaking up of Lee's right wing at Five Forks; Lee's 
retreat; Grant's grim, relentless pursuit; Sheridan, like a 
raging lion, heading off the fleeing armies, that were 
wearied, worn, decimated, conquered; and, at the end, 
the modesty of the victorious general; the delicacy with 
which he treated his beaten foe; the humanity of the terms 
given to the men: sent away with food, and horses for 
their farms: — all this will form a picture of War and of 
Peace. 

He never forgot that the South was part of his country. 
The moment that the South lay panting and helpless upon 
the ground, Grant carried himself with magnanimous and 
sympathetic consideration. After the fall of Richmond he 
turned aside, and returned to Washington without entering 
the conquered capital. 

When Johnston surrendered upon terms not agreeable to 
Lincoln, Stanton, like a roaring lion fearing to lose its 



852 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

prey, sent Grant to overrule him. He loved Sherman, 
and was unwilling to enter his camp lest he should 
seem to snatch from him the glory of his illustrious cam- 
paign. From a near town he enabled Sherman to recon- 
struct his terms, and accept General Johnston's surrender. 
When Lincoln was dead, Vice-President Johnson be- 
came President; a man well fitted for carrying on a fight, 
but not skilled in peace; with a morbid sense of justice, 
he determined that the leaders of rebellion should be made 
to suffer as examples; as if the death of all the first-born, 
the desolation of every Southern home, the impoverished 
condition and bankruptcy of every citizen, were not exam- 
ple enough ! He ordered Lee to be arrested. Grant 
refused. When Johnson would have employed the army 
to effect his purposes. Grant, with quick but noble rebell- 
ion, refused obedience to his superior, and, arranging to 
take from his hands all military control, repressed the 
President's wild temper and savage purpose of a dishonor- 
ing justice. 

Having brought the long and disastrous war to a close, 
in his own heart Grant would have chosen to have rested 
upon his laurels, and lived a retired military life. It was 
not to be permitted. He was called to the Presidency by 
universal acclaim, and it fell to him to conduct a campaign 
of Reconstruction even more burdensome than the war. 

It would seem impossible to combine in one, eminent 
civil and military genius. To a certain extent they have 
elements in common. But the predominant element in 
war, is organized Force; of civil government. Influence. 
Statesmanship is less brilliant than generalship, but re- 
quires a different and a higher moral and intellectual 
genius. God is frugal in creating great men — men great 
enough to hold in eminence the elements of a great gen- 
eral and of a great ruler. Washington was eminent in 
statesmanship — but then he was not a great general. At 
any rate, he had no opportunity to develop the fact. 

Alexander was a mere brutal fighter. 

Caesar as Emperor differed from Caesar as General only 
as a sword sheathed differs from a sword unsheathed. 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 853 

Frederick the Great was simply a military ruler. 

Napoleon came near to combine the two elements in the 
earlier period of his career, but the genius of force gradu- 
ally weakened that sense of right and justice on which 
statesmanship must rest. 

Grant had in him the element of great statesmanship; but 
neither his education, nor his training, nor the desperate 
necessities of war, gave it a fair chance of development in a 
condition of things which bewildered the wisest statesmen. 

The tangled skein of affairs would have tasked a Cavour 
or a Bismarck. The period of reconstruction is yet too 
near our war-inflamed eyes to be philosophically judged. 

First came the disbanding of the army. That was so 
easily done that the world has never done justice to the 
marvel. The soldiers of three great armies dropped their 
arms at the word of command, dissolved their organiza- 
tions, and disappeared. To-day the mightiest force on 
earth; to-morrow they were not ! As a summer storm 
darkens the whole heavens, shakes the ground with its 
thunder, empties its quiver of lightning, and is gone 
in an hour, as if it had never been, so was it with both 
armies. Neither in the South nor in the North was there 
a cabal of officers, nor any affray of soldiers — for every 
soldier was yet more a citizen. 

In this resumption of citizen life, Grant, accompanied by 
his most brilliant generals, led the way. He hated war, 
its very insignia, and in foreign lands refused to witness 
military pageants. He had had enough of war. He loved 
peace. 

When advanced to the Presidency, three vital questions 
were to be solved. 

1. The status of the four million emancipated slaves. 

2. The adjustment of the political relations of the dis- 
located States. 

3. The restraint and control of that gulf-stream of 
finance which threatened to wash out the foundations of 
honest industry, and which brought to the nation more 
moral mischief than had the whole war itself. We are in 
peril from golden quicksands yet. 



854 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

Grant was eminently wise upon this question. His veto 
saved the country from a vitiated and corrupting circula- 
tion. 

The exaltation of the domestic African to immediate 
citizenship was the most audacious act of faith and fidelity 
that ever was witnessed. 

Their fidelity to the duties of bondage had been most 
Christian. In all the war, knowing that their emancipation 
was to be gained or lost, there never was an insurrection, 
nor a recorded instance of cruelty or insubordination. This 
came not from cowardice; for, when, in the later periods 
of the war, they were enlisted and drilled, they made sol- 
diers so brave as to extort admiration and praise from 
prejudice itself. They deserved their liberty for their good 
conduct. 

Yet, were they prepared for citizenship? The safety of 
our civil economy rests upon the intelligence of the citi- 
zen; but the slaves in mass were greatly ignorant. 

It was a political necessity to arm them with the ballot 
as a means of self-defense. 

In many of the Southern States a probationary state 
would have been wiser, but in others it would have re- 
manded them to substantial bondage. 

In this grand department of statesmanship General 
Grant accepted the views of the most eminent men of the 
Republican party, — Stanton, Chase, Sumner, Thad. Stevens, 
Fessenden, Sherman, Garfield, Conkling, Evarts, and all of 
the great leaders. 

In the readjustment of the political relations of the 
South he was wise, generous, and magnanimous in his 
career. Not a line in letter, speech, or message can be 
found that would wound the self-respect of Southern citi- 
zens. 

When the dangerous heresy of a greenback currency 
had gained political power, and Congress was disposed to 
open the flood-gates of a rotten currency, his veto, an act 
of courage, turned back the deluge and saved the land 
from a whole generation of mischief. Had he done but 
this one thing, he would have deserved well of history. 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 855 

The respects in which he fell below the line of sound 
statesmanship — and these are not a few — are to be attrib- 
uted to the influence of advisers whom he had taken into 
his confidence. Such was his loyalty to friendship that it 
must be set down as a fault — a fault rarely found among 
public men. 

Many springs of mischief were opened which still flow. 
When it was proposed to nominate Grant for a third term, 
the real objections to the movement among wise and dis- 
passionate men was not so much against Grant as against 
the staff which would come in with him. 

On the whole, if one considers the intrinsic difficulty of 
the questions belonging to his administration, the stormy 
days of politics and parties during his eight years, it must 
be admitted that the country owes to his unselfish dispo- 
sition, to his general wisdom, to his unsullied integrity, if 
not the meed of wisest yet the reputation of one who, pre- 
eminent in war, was eminent in administration, more per- 
haps by the wisdom of a noble nature than by that intel- 
ligence which is bred only by experience. Imperious 
counselors and corrupt parasites dimmed the light of his 
political administration. 

We turn from Grant's public life to his unrestful private 
life. After a return from a tour of the world, during 
which he met on all hands a distinguished reception, he 
ventured upon the dangerous road of speculation. The de- 
sire of large wealth was deep-seated in Grant's soul. His 
early experience of poverty had probably taken away 
from it all romance. Had wealth been sought by a legiti- 
mate production of real property, he would have added 
one more laurel to his career. But, with childlike sim- 
plicity of ignorance, he committed all he had to the wild 
chances of legalized gambling. But a few days before 
the humiliating crash came, he believed himself to be 
worth three millions of dollars ! What service had been 
rendered for it ? What equivalent of industry, skill, produc- 
tiveness, distribution or convenience ? None. Did he 
never think that this golden robe, with which he designed 
to clothe his declining years, was woven of air, was in its 



856 PATRIOTIC ADDRESSES. 

nature unsubstantial, and not reputable ? His success was 
a gorgeous bubble, reflecting on its brilliant surface all 
the hues of heaven, but which grew thinner as it swelled 
larger. A touch dispelled the illusion, and left him poor. 

It is a significant proof of the impression produced 
upon the public mind of the essential honesty of his mind, 
and of the simplicity of his ignorance of practical busi- 
ness, that the whole nation condoned his folly, and be- 
lieved in his intentional honesty. But the iron had en- 
tered his soul. That which all the hardships of war, and 
the wearing anxieties of public administration could not 
do, the shame and bitterness of this great bankruptcy 
achieved. 

The resisting forces of his body gave way. A disease 
in ambush sprang forth and carried him captive. Pa- 
tiently he sat in the region and shadow of death. A mild 
heroism of gentleness and patience hovered about him. 
The iron will that' had upheld him in all the vicissitudes 
of war, still in a gracious guise sustained his lingering 
hours. 

His household love, never tarnished, never abated, now 
roused him to one last heroic achievement — to provide for 
the future of his family. No longer were there golden 
hopes for himself. The vision of wealth had vanished. 
But love took its place, and under weakness, pain, and 
anguish, he wrought out a history of his remarkable 
career. A kindly hand administered the trust. It has 
amply secured his loved household from want. 

When the last lines were written, he lay back upon his 
couch and breathed back his great soul to God, whom he 
had worshiped unostentatiously after the manner of his 
fathers. 

A man he was without vices, vi\X\\ an absolute hatred of 
lies and an ineradicable love of truth, of a perfect loyalty 
to friendship, neither envious of others nor selfish for 
himself. With a zeal for the public good, unfeigned, he 
has left to memory only such weaknesses as connect him 
with humanity, and such virtues as will rank him among 
heroes. 



EULOGY ON GRANT. 857 

The tidings of his death, long expected, gave a shock 
to the whole world. Governments, rulers, eminent states- 
men, and scholars from all civilized nations gave sincere 
tokens of sympathy. For the hour, sympathy rolled as a 
wave over all our own land. It closed the last furrow of 
war, it extinguished the last prejudice, it effaced the last 
vestige of hatred, — and cursed be the hand that shall bring 
them back ! 

Johnston and Buckner [of the Confederates] on one side 
of his bier, Sherman and Sheridan [of the Federals] upon 
the other, he has come to his tomb a silent symbol that 
liberty had conquered slavery, patriotism rebellion, and 
peace war. 

He rests in peace. No drum or cannon shall disturb 
his slumber. 

Sleep, hero, until another trumpet shall shake the 
heavens and the earth. Then come forth to glory in im- 
mortality ! 



